The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN last Monday, May 25

[Wahoo Redux]

You've misinterpreted what your own excerpt says.  Reread it.  It is not hard to comprehend.

Okay, here:

"...headlines and the May 29 charging document falsely overstated the role of Floyd's coronary artery disease and hypertension,..."

The headlines and police documentation overplayed the roles of heart disease and high-blood pressure in the death of Floyd.  In other words, the headlines that portrayed Floyd's death as a matter of preexisting heart conditions were inaccurate.

"...which increase the risk of stroke and heart attack over years, not minutes."

These are conditions which take a long-time to affect someone's health, years actually, and would not kill someone during a short-term event.  In other words, no, Floyd would not have died of coronary artery disease and hypertension under the circumstances of his arrest.  Something else killed him.

"Asphyxia—suffocation—does not always demonstrate physical signs, as other physician groups have noted."

And the probable cause of death, suffocation, is not always detectable.  Physicians have said this already.

At the bottom of that page are the authors' credentials in brief.  They are all doctors.  Look for yourself.  You have a team of doctors telling you that high blood pressure did not kill this man.

You've just got it wrong.  Just let it go, son. 

[mahagonny]

I have no great love of the police culture to the point of trusting them down to the last body. Know what got me re thinking this? We have information these physicians didn't have. We now have a video of George Floyd complaining that he couldn't breathe before Derek Chauvin arrived, before he was taken out of the police car and put on the ground (he requested to be allowed to lie down outdoors, BTW) before the knee was on his neck. Why would you not be able to breathe inside a police car? Two possible answers: (1) you're breathing just fine and lying about it, that's possible, or (2) you're a smoker who's taking drugs that cause respiratory failure.
There's also information we still don't have: what was the degree of force applied to the neck? Only Chauvin knows.

And even if Floyd was on "borrowed time"----which you don't know----that excuses nothing that was done to him.  Why is it that conservatives are always such inhumane thinkers?

A little perspective: Chauvin is fired, so he won't be doing what he did any more. Yet people are clamoring for him to spend the rest of his life in jail. I can't think of any reason Derek Chauvin, in particular, should spend the rest of his life in jail for a very bad day at work in which he did his job using one of the the options for which he was trained. Can you?

You've just got it wrong.  Just let it go, son.

Pretty sure I'm older than you.

[marshwiggle]

I have no great love of the police culture to the point of trusting them down to the last body. Know what got me re thinking this? We have information these physicians didn't have. We now have a video of George Floyd complaining that he couldn't breathe before Derek Chauvin arrived, before he was taken out of the police car and put on the ground (he requested to be allowed to lie down outdoors, BTW) before the knee was on his neck. Why would you not be able to breathe inside a police car? Two possible answers: (1) you're breathing just fine and lying about it, that's possible, or (2) you're a smoker who's taking drugs that cause respiratory failure.
There's also information we still don't have: what was the degree of force applied to the neck? Only Chauvin knows.

This is the vital question. Before seeing the bodycam video, the obvious interpretation of "I can't breathe" with someone's knee on a person's neck was that the knee was applying lots of pressure. But knowing that in the police car, with nothing on his face or neck, he was saying "I can't breathe", it completely calls into question whether the pressure on his neck was excessive.

What is needed is a medical expert with no axe to grind in this situation who can look at the autopsy results to see whether the medical history and amount of drugs in his system would be likely to result in respiratory arrest.

[Wahoo Redux]

Videos do not change medical fact.  You are grasping at straws.

Pretty sure I'm older than you.

Perhaps.

The Beatles' Help is five months older than I am.

[Wahoo Redux]

A little perspective: Chauvin is fired, so he won't be doing what he did any more. Yet people are clamoring for him to spend the rest of his life in jail. I can't think of any reason Derek Chauvin, in particular, should spend the rest of his life in jail for a very bad day at work in which he did his job using one of the the options for which he was trained. Can you?

Yes.  Murder.  Police brutality.  That was not what he was trained to do.  That's the most ridiculous thing you've ever posted, and you seem mighty hysterical to prove Floyd was a bad man who does not deserve our empathy.  Now you are defending a killer-cop.

Mahagonny, you are actually now starting to sound like one of these frustrated, impotent bigots.  If this is the case, we have nothing to talk about.

[mamselle]

I started this thread and now I can barely stand to open it and read it.

Could people all please speak to/write to each other with respect and avoid name-calling, characterizations, and insubstantiatable charges of bad will?

I know an OP can't direct the direction of a thread, but I'd like to think I had something to say about its tone.

This issue is a painful, serious one.

It is not meant to be another locus for grandstanding.

People may have good points to make on either side, but they can be made with care and consideration.

At heart, that's what the issue itself was about.

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

Sorry mamselle, but I don't think this topic is going to go smoothly, no matter where it is discussed.  It is simply an ugly, terrible event with ugly consequences that taps into a very dark part of the American psyche.  It is simply going to be bad.

For my part I don't think there is anything left to say here.  I'm out.

[marshwiggle]

A little perspective: Chauvin is fired, so he won't be doing what he did any more. Yet people are clamoring for him to spend the rest of his life in jail. I can't think of any reason Derek Chauvin, in particular, should spend the rest of his life in jail for a very bad day at work in which he did his job using one of the the options for which he was trained. Can you?

Yes.  Murder.  Police brutality. 

These assume that George Floyd died because of excessive pressure on his neck applied by Derek Chauvin. But as I indicated above, that is based on the assumption that the pressure was what caused the respiratory problems. Since the respiratory problems preceeded the events outside the police car, the breathing problems themselves are not solid evidence of how much pressure was being applied to George Floyd's neck.

I have no medical training, so I have no idea whether the pre-existing health conditions and the drug use would have been likely to produce respiratory failure without any external pressure on his windpipe. That's a question that needs to be answered, and it has to be answered by someone who's not an advocate for either side in this situation.

That question has nothing to do with bigotry, or support (or lack thereof) for the police; it's a scientific question that needs to be addressed so that this case can come to some sort of objective resolution.

(And, even if the evidence ultimately supports the conclusion of police brutality, that does not in and of itself answer the question of whether it was racially-motivated.)

[writingprof]

I started this thread and now I can barely stand to open it and read it.

Could people all please speak to/write to each other with respect and avoid name-calling, characterizations, and insubstantiatable charges of bad will?

I know an OP can't direct the direction of a thread, but I'd like to think I had something to say about its tone.

This issue is a painful, serious one.

It is not meant to be another locus for grandstanding.

People may have good points to make on either side, but they can be made with care and consideration.

At heart, that's what the issue itself was about.

M.

Your selection of the word "murder" set the tone of the thread.  "Killing" might have sent it in a different direction.  Perhaps the best thread would have been "An Appreciation of George Floyd by People Who Knew Him," which would have remained mercifully blank on these fora.

[mamselle]

Got it.

It's all my fault.

One can't expect adult conversation over controversial topics; one should just softpedal issues to avoid anything uncomfortable.

Maybe I should just ask for the thread to be taken down.

...but that's just giving into the bad actors.

So it stays, but I mourn the consideration and thoughtfulness that might have been.

M.

[Parasaurolophus]

Given that his death is being treated as a murder, and people involved in it have been charged with murder, it's entirely appropriate, at this juncture, to characterize his death as a murder.

[writingprof]

Given that his death is being treated as a murder, and people involved in it have been charged with murder, it's entirely appropriate, at this juncture, to characterize his death as a murder.

The phrase "is being treated as" is doing some heavy lifting there, boss.  How about, "Given that treating his death as a murder serves important political interests"?

As for your second phrase, will his death stop being a murder when Chauvin et al. are acquitted? 

[Parasaurolophus]

The phrase "is being treated as" is doing some heavy lifting there, boss.  How about, "Given that treating his death as a murder serves important political interests"?

As for your second phrase, will his death stop being a murder when Chauvin et al. are acquitted?

'Is being treated as' corresponds to the charging documents. And to the classification of his death.

But yes, unless his death does not get reclassified as a result.

[mahagonny]

The phrase "is being treated as" is doing some heavy lifting there, boss.  How about, "Given that treating his death as a murder serves important political interests"?

As for your second phrase, will his death stop being a murder when Chauvin et al. are acquitted?

'Is being treated as' corresponds to the charging documents. And to the classification of his death.

But yes, unless his death does not get reclassified as a result.

So 'innocent until proven guilty' is strictly how the law works, with no expectation that society gives any weight to it?

A little perspective: Chauvin is fired, so he won't be doing what he did any more. Yet people are clamoring for him to spend the rest of his life in jail. I can't think of any reason Derek Chauvin, in particular, should spend the rest of his life in jail for a very bad day at work in which he did his job using one of the the options for which he was trained. Can you?

Yes.  Murder.  Police brutality. 

These assume that George Floyd died because of excessive pressure on his neck applied by Derek Chauvin. But as I indicated above, that is based on the assumption that the pressure was what caused the respiratory problems. Since the respiratory problems preceeded the events outside the police car, the breathing problems themselves are not solid evidence of how much pressure was being applied to George Floyd's neck.

I have no medical training, so I have no idea whether the pre-existing health conditions and the drug use would have been likely to produce respiratory failure without any external pressure on his windpipe. That's a question that needs to be answered, and it has to be answered by someone who's not an advocate for either side in this situation.

That question has nothing to do with bigotry, or support (or lack thereof) for the police; it's a scientific question that needs to be addressed so that this case can come to some sort of objective resolution.

(And, even if the evidence ultimately supports the conclusion of police brutality, that does not in and of itself answer the question of whether it was racially-motivated.)

That's the other question that has recently become accepted to be taboo. It's considered racist to wonder if Chauvin may be just a meanie (as Glenn Lourie has). Inconsistencies don't matter. One of the four is African American, and now his friends have turned against him. These realities may be drearily disappointing among average folks, but striking when you see them in academics, who are supposed to be trained to insist on evidence.

[ergative]

So 'innocent until proven guilty' is strictly how the law works, with no expectation that society gives any weight to it?

I mean, yeah.