George Floyd Body Cam Video Makes Situation Hurt Even More
George Floyd begged police officers in Minneapolis to not kill him.
He told the officers that he had claustrophobia and could not handle sitting in the cramped back seat of a police vehicle.
The former Houston resident told Minneapolis police that he was not a bad guy, and that he would not harm them.
What makes that even more soul crushing is the fact that those pleas came before former police officer Derek Chauvin placed his knee on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes as he begged again for his life, calling out to his deceased mother and family members.
Still Chauvin and his former comrades could not care less as they watched a man die allegedly for spending a counterfeit $20 bill.
In an image from the leaked video, an officer approached Floyd’s vehicle with his weapon drawn.
Again, this happened all of this because Floyd allegedly tried to spend a counterfeit $20 bill.
Still, you have people saying that Floyd’s death had nothing to do with race.
Some have said that Chauvin and his killer crew just were bad police officers.
Some have said that some police officers are just jerks or a-holes.
But why does it seem like the bad officers, jerks and a-holes only show up when the alleged criminal or perpetrator is Africa-American?
Why do people like Dylann Roof, Zachery Deville and James Holmes always get the good, reasonable and nonviolent police officers?
I guess I can chalk that perceived reality up to bad luck.
Civil right attorney Benjamin Crump said, “The police officers approached him with guns drawn, simply because he was a Black man. As the video shows, he never posed any threat. The officers’ contradictions continue to build. If not for the videos, the world might never have known about the wrongs committed against George Floyd.”
Juxtapose the way police officers treated George Floyd to the way police officers actually treated violent criminals like Roof and Holmes, and it is unfathomable that some people still think it is not about race.
Like Crump said, if not for the video where would we be?
George Floyd would have just been another dead African-American who died because he was a so-called criminal and/or thug.
Like in many other cases involving the killings of unarmed African-Americans, people in the media and law enforcement tried to find some discretion or imperfection from his past to justify the killings.
He once sold drugs, stole, smoked weed or cheated on a first grade spelling test.
Therefore, he deserved to die.
However, when violent White criminals commit offenses, the law enforcement and judicial community sometimes give them the benefit of the doubt, worrying about the damage a criminal record would have on their lives.
Former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner only served three months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster.
Prosecutors in the Turner case had demanded a six-year prison sentence.
Although obviously in another jurisdiction, year and state, the late, great rapper/actor Tupac Shakur once gotten sentenced to up to four years in Clinton Correctional Facility in New York for forcibly touching the buttocks of Ayanna Jackson.
Who could forget Ethan Couch, who successfully used the made up mental condition of “affluenza” to initially stay out of jail?
Because Couch had grown up in an affluent area, he would not survive prison and therefore should be spared conviction.
Deville stabbed police officers trying to arrest him in Louisiana.
However, police officers still arrested Deville without shooting him or physically harming him.
With all of these stories proving the importance of Black Lives Matter, many critics still do not get it.
I recently had a White person dismiss the killing of George Floyd because many African-Americans grew up without a father in the house and the ultimate fake news, the epidemic of Black-on-Black crime.
In his mind, if more African-American fathers were living in the homes with their children, then police would not kill them.
He went on to tell me that he was the least racist White person in the world.
If a person justifies the killing of unarmed African-American by police officers for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill because most African-American children grow up in single-parent homes, then that person is more racist than they thought.
People like that are a major part of the problem because they have let racist stereotypes influence how they see an entire race of people.
If a cop pulls me over and assumes I fit all of their stereotypes about African-Americans instead of seeing an upstanding and educated African-American man, then he or she needs to look for a new line of work because his/her ignorance puts my life in danger for no apparent reason.
As if George Floyd’s murder is justified because some African-American relationships or marriages end up dissolving.
If a person tries to downplay the killing of Floyd, systemic racism or police brutality, that person is an all-out racist.
They just have not come to that realization yet.
If a person can watch George Floyd beg for his life for minutes and call out to his dead mother and still not empathize with him, that person is not just a racist.
Such a person is a disgrace to mankind and should not even call him or herself a human being.
Even animals empathize with a person or creature when they are hurt or in danger.
Most importantly, people who lack the empathy of an animal should not be charged with protecting and serving the community.
