Death of George Floyd in Minneapolis Result of Approved Minneapolis Police Training by Larry C Johnson

The Minneapolis police officers accused of murdering George Floyd are being railroaded and are likely to be exonerated once the full evidence is presented. This does not mean that I approve of or endorse how the Minneapolis cops handled the situation. But the video that has enraged so many people is very misleading.

If you are part of the mob ready to lynch Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the "murder" of George Floyd, you may have to put your rope away. I think Chauvin will be able to prove in court that his use of his knee on the side of the neck of Floyd was a technique he had been trained to use by the Minneapolis Police Department. It is in the training manual and has been on the books for more than eight years. Don't take my word for it, read it yourself:

5-311 USE OF NECK RESTRAINTS AND CHOKE HOLDS (10/16/02) (08/17/07) (10/01/10) (04/16/12)

DEFINITIONS I.

Choke Hold: Deadly force option. Defined as applying direct pressure on a person’s trachea or airway (front of the neck), blocking or obstructing the airway (04/16/12)

Neck Restraint: Non-deadly force option. Defined as compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck). Only sworn employees who have received training from the MPD Training Unit are authorized to use neck restraints. The MPD authorizes two types of neck restraints: Conscious Neck Restraint and Unconscious Neck Restraint. (04/16/12)

Conscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with intent to control, and not to render the subject unconscious, by only applying light to moderate pressure. (04/16/12)

Unconscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with the intention of rendering the person unconscious by applying adequate pressure. (04/16/12)

PROCEDURES/REGULATIONS II.

The Conscious Neck Restraint may be used against a subject who is actively resisting. (04/16/12)

The Unconscious Neck Restraint shall only be applied in the following circumstances: (04/16/12)
On a subject who is exhibiting active aggression, or;

For life saving purposes, or;

On a subject who is exhibiting active resistance in order to gain control of the subject; and if lesser attempts at control have been or would likely be ineffective.

Neck restraints shall not be used against subjects who are passively resisting as defined by policy. (04/16/12)

After Care Guidelines (04/16/12)

After a neck restraint or choke hold has been used on a subject, sworn MPD employees shall keep them under close observation until they are released to medical or other law enforcement personnel.
An officer who has used a neck restraint or choke hold shall inform individuals accepting custody of the subject, that the technique was used on the subject.

The crucial question will be whether George Floyd "exhibited active aggression." The video record of the incident is incomplete. New footage has emerged that shows Floyd in the vehicle and he is not sitting passively. The new video shows evidence of a struggle aka "active aggression."

I am not defending the use of this type of restraint. But I am pretty certain that evidence will emerge showing that Chauvin was trained to use the knee to the neck as a means of "non-violent" restraint. The key questions Chauvin's lawyer will be asking regarding this training will include the following:

1. Did the training manual specify a maximum amount of time that a knee could be applied to a suspect's neck?
2. Did the training manual carry a clear warning that use of this technique could cause the death of a suspect?

If the answers to those two questions are "NO", then Officer Chauvin's defense is quite clear.

Then there is the matter of George Floyd's drug intoxication. He was Speedballing. (See here for a full description of Speedballing.) When you mix Methamphetamine with Fentanyl, that is "Speedballing". You are mixing an upper with a downer.

George Floyd is not unique. He is part of a growing trend in the drug combinations people are using. The Partnership For Drug Free Kids reported in January:

A growing number of people in the United States are using methamphetamine and fentanyl, often together, according to a new analysis of urine drug tests.

Methamphetamine is a stimulant. Fentanyl is a depressant. According to the American Addiction Centers, combining stimulants like meth with depressants (like Fentanyl) can mask overdose symptoms until it’s too late to get help.

LaFuente, a Hollywood Drug Treatment center, reports that:

many people who are taking meth and fentanyl together do not realize they are doing so. Often, individuals who take meth or cocaine laced with fentanyl have a low tolerance for opioids and are at risk of overdose (NIDA). Essentially, these are two of the most dangerous drugs one could take alone but especially in combination when it comes to overdose.

The Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association reports that, "Respiratory failure is particularly likely with speedballs because the effects of stimulants wear off far more quickly than the effects of opioids."

Another effect is that the user who has ingested this kind of Speedball can be hit with an urgent need to urinate or vomit.

It also is very possible that George Floyd did not realize he had ingested Fentanyl. Many drug users going for the Meth high take hits without realizing they are getting a Fentanyl laced Speedball.

The part of the video that is missing (and the story that still needs to be told) is how Floyd reacted when he was put into the police car. The video that has emerged indicates there was some commotion inside the car. That commotion will explain why Floyd was taken out of the car, put on the ground and restrained in accordance with Minneapolis Police Department procedures.

This part of the story is being largely ignored. Yet, just last night, the Minneapolis City Council admitted this was a practice by banning its use going forward:

All 12 members of the city council voted to make "quick changes" as the investigation progresses, ultimately resulting in a consent decree from the courts that will require change, said Lucero, who was appointed to the position in January 2019 by Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat.

The following reforms are to be implemented immediately:

-- Chokeholds and other neck restraints are banned.

The mere fact that these "restraints" are now banned is a clear admission that they were approved methods under the rules and procedures of the Minneapolis Police Department. Oh yeah, one last thing, the Chief of Police of the Minneapolis Police Department is black. Are we supposed to believe he was unaware of this practice? Bullshit. He came up through the ranks and his training record will show that he not only was trained in the method used by Officer Chauvin. He also probably used it once or twice during his rise to the top of the force.

Comments

[J]

The Minnesota AG Ellison's son has voiced his personal support for the terrorist group ANTIFA. So does his daddy the AG secretly support terrorist ANTIFA? I have to scratch my head in wonder.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/son-of-minnesotas-attorney-general-declares-support-for-antifa

[Deap]

Even if there had been no knee headlock used to restrain Floyd, after he tried resist arrest and flee, he easily could have claimed he "could not breathe" due to the massive amounts of drugs in his system - each of which can cause breathing suppression to the point of death.

All four police officers could have released him and he still would have died from his own hand.

The chain of evidence for "but for the neck restraint" as cause of death can only come out during a trial, with sworn testimony and vigorous cross examination. Good luck with that, considering the confounding factor of his his own hand in his own demise.

We all need to take a chill pill on any conclusions at this time. He was not just swallowing a Tums before his own demise.

[Eric Newhill]

Larry,
Yes. That is a good summary of the background of the situation. I will reiterate that in my personal experience that neck restraint can be applied with regulated pressure. The full weight of the body is only on the neck if you want it to be - and I don't see that in the video. I see Floyd having enough slack to move his head a little bit. The only thing I don't understand is why the restraint was applied so long. The other cops should have applied zip ties (or whatever) to Floyd's legs and then hoisted him into the car. There may be policies around that that are relevant.

I think the cops' lawyers should be able to raise doubts in the jurors' as to what killed Floyd. Now the lawyers have to identify a court where the cops can receive a fair trial. That should be a more challenging aspect of legal practice. Then the military will have to be positioned on full alert when the jury comes back with a decision.

[Deap]

Any police get charged with murder because of these Speedball deaths?

"...Speedball use has led to the deaths of numerous celebrities, including Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John Belushi, Chris Farley and River Phoenix."...

I believe the toxic overdose death of Micheal Jackson was also caused by the combination of uppers and downers. That did lead to murder charges against the prescribing physician. In that case Floyd's junkie dealer should be on the stand; not the police who were forced to restrain him.

What a lost teaching moment about the ongoing dangers of rampant drugs in the black community. Nary a mention. Just pointing fingers of guilt and screaming shame at anyone one who does not get in lline with BLM lies and lynching police everywhere as tried and convicted cold blooded murderers

[Babak makkinejad]

Larry Jonson

When was this regulation introduced, do you know?

Minnesota is largely settled by Northern Europeans.

Does police in Norway, for example, use such methods?

[Babak makkinejad]

Deap

The Chain of Evidence is this:

Had he not been arrested, he would have been alive today.

[akaPatience]

Thanks for all of this important info. Unfortunately, even tragically, it's rare to find such germane data in articles about this subject. It shouldn't be the case that a reporter risks vilification for telling the truth and not conforming to a certain narrative, but sadly, that's the state of "journalism" these days.

I've read that at least 2 of the other cops on the scene were rookies who Chauvin was tasked with training. If true, I wonder if this could at least partially explain the duration of his knee on Floyd's neck?

[Jack]

Babak,

We don’t know if he would have been alive today if he wasn’t arrested.

He was on drugs. How long before he would have OD’d?

[Eric Newhill]

Babak,
Had he not been arrested he'd most likely be dead from a drug OD.

Your anti-law enforcement stance is part and parcel for the subversive anti-western stance you've adopted as of late. Is that this same Babak that used to abhor drug use and insists that The Law is the most important thing in the world? What do they do to drug abusers in Iran/Muslim countries?

[Nancy K]

It is really apples and oranges regarding abortions and drug overdose. A woman black or white makes the decision to have an abortion, it is not forced upon her. Likewise a drug overdose is also a matter of a choice, taking drugs is usually a choice, granted a poor one that an individual makes. However George Floyd was not given a choice, that policeman's knee on his neck for almost 9 minutes made the decision, his death, for him.
Chauvin was the trainer, what exactly was he training the rookies to be, a murderer like him? I feel sorry for the 2 rookies they were probably afraid to disagree or speak up against a superior officer, and they will most likely pay a heavy price for that.
I am not antipolice at all. Supposedly Chauvin was in the military police, our son is in security in the Navy and he said sitting with your knee on someone's neck until they stopped breathing is not an acceptable hold, it is murder.

[turcopolier]

NancyK

Floyd made the choice to fill himself with the drugs that made him vulnerable to the kneeling. Your son wants you to approve of him. What does your ex IDF husband say or is he allowed to have an opinion at all? The Palestinians are knelt on like this by the IDF and police all the time.

[Fred]

Nancy K,

You'll be happy to know that the party that has run the city since '78 has changed the police manual. "If only" they council had been voted out of office when Justine Diamond had been murdered. You remember the riots and the planetary concern over her death at the hands of a trained Minneapolis police officer? Yeah, me either. Same for the tradgedy before that. Tragedies there were, the responses, quite different.

[Babak makkinejad]

Jack

It would be useful to distinguish among the 4 causes in this case:

The Efficient cause,
The Formal cause,
The Material cause,
and the Final cause.

[Artemesia]

Yesterday Dr. Michael Saag urged C Span listeners to "social distance, wear a mask: it's not to protect you, it's to protect me and everyone around you. Show you care!"

What percentage of people who die of Covid succumb due to obesity, or lung disease aggravated by a decade of smoking, or drugging?
I'm a bit overweight, but I don't think that's contagious.
When my BP measured far above a healthy range, I took measures to reduce sodium, increase exercise, and brought it down by 30 - 40 points over a very few weeks. It's not that hard, and only I could do it -- high blood pressure is not contagious except from agenda-drivers like Dr. Saag.
I never smoked, so nobody caught lung disease from my second-hand smoke.
I don't consume a gallon of sugared drinks each day (tho I admit to running thru a $1 bag of chips if I'm on a long trip and bored).

If you don't care about your own health enough to control your appetites, why is it my job to care about you?

Masks are a form of social control.
Join the Resistance!

[Vince R]

I was willing to cut the officers some slack. However, once Floyd's pulse was taken and the attending officer could not find one, the officer needed to get off his neck.

[anon]

I have a saying...why show your cards when you can play the joker.

[Babak makkinejad]

Artemisia

I thought you were a Catholic Christian.

Then you would know that man is too weak.

[Mark]

FYI: Not sure if you are aware, but it seems that as of now at least, one cannot send links to this blog to someone via Facebook Messenger. Attempts to sent generate this:

"Send failed
(#368) The action attempted has been deemed abusive or is otherwise disallowed."

This kind of censorship should not go unpunished in my view.

Apologies if you have been aware of this already.

[mcohen]

Babak

The man was engaged in criminal activity.He had a history.The police followed procedure.It,s all going down my man.

Correct me if I am wrong but is that a 33 degree freemason symbol tattoed on his chest.The mirror reflection of an eagle.

https://iharare.com/george-floyd-a-freemason/

[Artemesia]

Babak, I was raised & spent first 2/3 of life deeply immersed in Catholic Christian teaching. I don't know how that relates to the requirement that I wear a mask to protect you from a disease that there is a .007% chance that I have.
It's never happened before, that I'm aware of, that those who are well are quarantined; makes no sense to me, but as the Franciscan who was my teacher in high school told me long ago, "You are a cynic." I didn't know what that meant, then, but I've since concluded he was correct -- actually, more like a skeptic. Anyway, Franciscans are not the best teachers, Benedictines are.

As for Dr. Saag & masks, here's what troubles me: In a book he wrote he talked about his passion to

"cure AIDS . . . the gay cancer . . .find something to slow the suffering and dying—all the while watching as the pandemic killed people I’d come to know and love. What we needed to do, it seemed to me, was so clear, so simple: We just needed to stop the virus. If we knew how to stop the virus, we could stop the terror, the wasting, the dying. . . . By now, science has given us the tools to stop the virus.
But in the real world where my patients live and my colleagues work, medicine hasn’t been able to end the plague, because knowing how to keep someone alive doesn’t necessarily or magically morph into public policy that keeps them alive.
They don’t need to die of a disease we can manage, but they do. They’ve been dying for more than thirty years. They are dying as I write this sentence. They’ll die before you finish reading this page."

For at least the last 6 months -- pre-Covid + during lockdown -- billboards in my majority Black neighborhood have displayed the image of a handsome young black male holding a rainbow umbrella, under the legend, "Love passionately." Take PrEP, a Gilead pharma medicine to be taken before gay sex to protect from AIDS.
Yes, people are weak. Gay men and women will have risky sex.
But does it make sense to encourage them to do so? What is the agenda behind such an ad?

If Gilead is encouraging gay men and women to have gay sex without fear of getting sick because they can take pills (that are heavily subsidized by Federal gov - taxpayers, by the way, at cost of about half-a-billion annually) that maybe will prevent sickness, then why isn't Dr. Saag spending his energy opposing the presence and message of those billboards rather than hectoring me to wear a mask to virtue-signal that I'll protect my neighbor from a disease I am 99% certain I do not have?

What is Saag's agenda?

[Babak makkinejad]

Thank you Artemesia.

I only meant about obese people who cannot, evidently, say no to food.

[PavewayIV]

Fentanyl is mixed with meth today because it's cheap - sometimes cheaper than meth, itself. Even meth heads say they can't distinguish much difference in effect between meth and (less) meth cut with fentanyl, despite the well-known effects of each one used separately.

The manufacturer/distributor isn't selling the speedball effect - they're just maximizing their profits by using the cheapest ingredients possible to keep their customers happy. Same with heroin and cocaine producers use of fentanyl to extend profits - if 'customers' don't complain about an inferior product/experience (and live to tell about it), then order another sack of fentanyl from Qinzhougang.

Anesthesiologists know fentanyl at certain levels administered too rapidly can cause a kind of respiratory paralysis known as Wooden Chest Syndrome.

Unfortunately, fentanyl is a norepinephrine(NE) reuptake inhibitor = excess NE in nerve synapses. Methamphetamine is an NE agonist, releasing stored NE into nerve synapses. Some of fentanyl's sedative effects are offset by methamphetamine, but the NE effects are synergistic. Your respiration slows without your usual awareness of that happening. Aside from muscle tremors/stiffness, high NE levels can cause a sense of panic or feeling that something awful is about to happen.

Wooden Chest Syndrome's effects can vary in intensity. WCS is not necessarily fatal, but nanoxalone does not work to reverse its effects. Victims are sometimes treated for opioid intoxication while they slowly succumb to WCS induced respiratory failure.

I only mention this in this context because few first responders are even aware of this. Sadly, meth cut with fentanyl is not a rarity. We'll see more of this in the future. Yet another good reason for cops to avoid using their sadistic Krav Maga restraints on citizens.

[Stephen Richter]

I feel terrible for this police officer. His job was to engage with Mr Floyd, bring him into custody. Even if he did the wrong thing, he has to be given the benefit of the doubt that his actions were the result of poor judgement, not malice. Mistakes should not be judged criminally when someone is doing what they are required to do.

[LJ]

Here is a pretty decent summary with additional video angles focusing on the events as they happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vksEJR9EPQ8&feature=emb_rel_pause&bpctr=1591683119

[Stephen Richter]

NY Times today. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/us/derek-chauvin-court.html Two of the officers, between them, had 7 days on the job.

From the article "... But he was also given at least two medals of valor. One was for his role in fatally shooting someone who was pointing a sawed-off shotgun at officers in 2006, the records said. The second was for a domestic-violence call in 2008. Mr. Chauvin broke down a bathroom door; after a struggle, he twice shot the person being sought, his file said.

Mr. Chauvin was awarded two medals of commendation. In 2008, he was recognized for apprehending a man accused of pointing a gun at a man and a woman — Mr. Chauvin and his partner followed the man with a gun, eventually tackling the man, who dropped a loaded .357.

His second was for working off-duty as security in November 2008 outside El Nuevo Rodeo. After he saw a man in an altercation fire off two rounds, Mr. Chauvin arrested him, the records showed. He also arrested some of the man’s friends, the records said, all of whom were accused of being part of a street gang. ..."

And we cannot give the man the decency of a fair trial and the liberty with which he can prepare his legal defense.