Seattle
Valued Senior Member
As someone who is asthmatic, I can assure you, you can actually do that when you have difficulty breathing.
Having had attacks where I collapsed and went blue, I went down still telling people I could not breathe. You would be surprised at how much not wanting to die makes you communicate what is wrong, despite what others may believe.
And we know he could not breathe, because he died. You could watch the time it happened. It was all caught on camera.
That's nice.
Except Chauvin did not arrest him. He had already been arrested and was being placed in a police car when Chauvin arrived, where upon Chauvin dragged him out of a police car - by dragging him across the back seat of the police car, and then knelt on his neck until he died. You can see it in the video I linked to Vociferous, above.
When Lane checked his pulse and found no pulse, Chauvin still failed to lift his knee and provide medical assistance. He still kept his knee on that man's neck even after the ambulance arrived. And they then delayed medical assistance when the fire truck arrived at the request of the paramedics and they refused to tell them where the ambulance was going or Floyd's condition.
But fear not. Chauvin's lawyers went with the tried and much used argument of the black man's size and strength, buying into the racist myth that has existed since white people chained and whipped black people in America and then dropped this bomb:
https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1376571696283549700
Also here:
Nelson, predictably, used his opening statement to try to make Floyd the defendant and onlookers his accomplices. Several times, he highlighted Floyd’s physical size — which should come as no surprise. Throughout U.S. history, the idea of Black men as superhuman in their strength and subhuman in how they use it has been used to justify our restraint, our incarceration, our lynching.
Nelson also sought to justify Chauvin’s actions by saying Chauvin and the other officers had to “divert” their attention to the small crowd that had gathered to watch what was happening and to complain about how Floyd was being treated. Again, this was unintentionally revealing: Those bystanders, like Floyd, were citizens whom those officers were sworn to protect. They were not the enemy, and no video we have seen indicates they posed any threat to Chauvin or his colleagues.
The opening statements made clear that much will be made of Floyd’s medical cause of death. Nelson indicated he will claim that Floyd died of an overdose of opioids. We can expect testimony from dueling experts on the question.
We should know by now — after so many travesties, including George Zimmerman’s acquittal for killing Trayvon Martin — that it is all too possible to convince juries to blame the victim if the victim is a Black man.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...d9f50-90b6-11eb-bb49-5cb2a95f4cec_story.html]
They had apparently diverted their attention to the crowd that had gathered telling them to get off his neck and check his pulse because he was not responding... Instead of apparently "caring" for Floyd. Which is how and why this happened. Because they were called names like "bum".
I guess this explains why he looked so relaxed with his hands in his pocket as he did it, and why he kept it there even after the ambulance arrived and why they then refused to tell the fire department where the ambulance had gone after the FD was called in to provide assistance as Floyd was in active cardiac arrest in the ambulance.
They blamed the victim because he's a big black man.
He didn't die from being choked. The autopsy didn't show strangulations or lack of air. He had a heart attack.
The comment about a big black man is appropriate when you are 6'4" and when 3 officers couldn't get him into the back of the police car (otherwise none of this would have happened).
It doesn't matter who arrested him, my point was all of this took place as part of the arresting process. If they weren't being respectful they could have just beat him until he was stuffed in the police car.
I agree that the last few minutes is the problematic part and that's where the whole case rests whether we are talking about the prosecution or the defense.
Again, he didn't die because he couldn't breathe. His heart gave out whether that was due to the knee on the neck, the drugs, his agitated condition or all of those factors. He wasn't "killed" because he was a "big black man", whether there is wrongdoing to be found or not.