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Recap
Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. The killing was deliberate, both in the sense of being a slow, step-wise process and in the sense of being intentional. Other than an exceptional manifestation of homicidal intent, there is no explanation for Chauvin's conduct. The man followed through; he proved he meant it.
As a true-crime story, it's not all that lurid. This isn't the most gruesome killing ever heard of, by far. It's not the worst police misconduct ever heard of, by far. But it is the most gruesome police misconduct ever to go viral on YouTube. The author of that misconduct was Derek Chauvin.
Was The Killing Racially Motivated?
Guessing at Chauvin's motivation is just guessing. There are believable guesses other than racism.
Better than guesses are observations:
George Floyd spent the last five minutes of his conscious existence in mortal terror and agonizing pain. His anguish was audible; wrenching to the hearts of witnesses. Floyd's cries did not soften the heart of Derek Chauvin. From this, we deem Chauvin's conduct to be callous.
George Floyd never offered a threat or an insult to Derek Chauvin or anyone else. He gave Chauvin no real cause for fear or anger. Even if Chauvin was upset after the scuffle, even if he became downshifted and it affected his reasoning faculties, Chauvin had five minutes to cool off. We deem Chauvin's conduct to be cold-blooded.
When Officers Chauvin and Thao arrived, the scene was at an impasse, but basically under control. Less than two minutes later, without a word to anyone, Derek Chavin began to kill George Floyd. From this, we deem Chauvin's conduct to be impulsive.
Chauvin spoke no more than two dozen words in the thirteen minutes he was on scene. That's weird.
The psychological effect of Chauvin's conduct on Officers Kueng and Lane will be covered later. For all that he didn't speak, Chauvin was extremely manipulative.
The psychological effect on other witnesses was devastating. Minute after minute, Chauvin sat unabashed in the face of all their expressed horror and outrage. If anything, their distress seemed to amuse him. Say what you will about Derek Chauvin; the man does not give in to peer pressure.
It's a safe guess that Chauvin did not plan on a lengthy jail term. He killed a random stranger in full view of a dozen witnesses and half that many cameras, and expected to get away with it. Several of the witnesses were on-duty first responders. Medic Smith saw what he saw. Derek Chauvin evinced no embarrassment; he remained seated atop George Floyd's neck a full minute longer. That's brazen; Chauvin flaunted his deed as though daring anyone to challenge him. Did he think he was untouchable, beyond the reach of mortal justice? Was he grandiose?
What do you call a killer who is callous, cold-blooded, impulsive, weird, manipulative, brazen, maybe grandiose, and not susceptible to social control?
A Weirdo
America is a big place. 330 million-or-so is a big number of people. In a population that big, especially considering anybody can get in, the freaks and outliers must be something to behold.
Apparently, a psychopath got loose in Minneapolis and ran around with a badge and a gun for nineteen years before finally outing himself. That's weird, but it's not impossible. Indeed, by the law of large numbers, it has to happen at some point, and then happen again later. That said, nothing quite like this ever happened before, or in the four years since. What Derek Chauvin did is strange and unlikely, even by the standards of strange, unlikely people and events.
This strangeness, this unlikeliness, provides some consolation for anyone who is disappointed to learn that Chauvin is not innocent after all. It also puts the lie to the mainstream narrative that Chauvin's weird conduct was somehow normal for a white police officer. It was not.
The catalog of Chauvin's guilt is barely begun; there will be many more turns of the scroll. Rather than wallow in the sorrow and the pity of it all, let us regard these things with cool intellectual wonder. Taking full account of the strangeness makes it bearable, puts it into rational perspective.
Derek Chauvin is a major-league weirdo; keep that in mind, and everything starts to make sense.
The Narrative
The tale of the mainstream media's incompetence and bad faith is long and dreary, and we've seen the white-murders-black narrative before. In the Chauvin case, though, it didn't manifest in the usual way. Normally they start by lying about the facts of the case. This time, they didn't have to lie about the facts of the case. Of course some of them did anyway, but the smarter ones jumped straight to the lies about What Does It All Mean? They soon lost interest in the facts of the case. They never got around to publishing a coherent factual story. A diligent reader can glean relevant facts from contemporary mainstream reporting, but it is just that: gleaning isolated nuggets of truth from reams of slanted, sensational reporting. That stuff is written in bulk to inflame the passion of partisans, not to inform the public.
They said Chauvin murdered a harmless black man. They always say that, and then the charges don't stick. But Chauvin's a weirdo, and the charges against him stuck. For once, the first pillar of the narrative didn't collapse.
They said it was racially motivated, which might be true but can't be proven. Whatever truth may be in this, there is still the matter of perspective. Derek Chauvin, acting on a whim, put a handcuffed stranger to death by suffocation. Hardly anybody would do that; most murderers are not that cold-blooded; most psychopaths are not that violent. Suppose Chauvin did cherish some unfashionable notions; what of it? Surely it is more consequential that there is nothing between his ears to restrain a homicidal impulse. Derek Chauvin is a dangerous person, with or without racial hangups. If he could do what he did to a black man, he might do anything to anybody. This pillar of the narrative stands aslant; it holds nothing up.
They said the murder was typical or representative of white society, culture, and law enforcement. This is slander, a provable lie. Mainstream America does not own Derek Chauvin; he is not one of us. He is a weirdo, an extreme weirdo. Over this claim, the roof of the narrative falls in.
Be all that as it may, the Chauvin incident is by far the most successful iteration of the white-murders-black narrative. It is more consequential than all the other instances put together. The key factor that gave this instance such far-reaching destructive power, is that Derek Chauvin is guilty.
Guilty of what? Chauvin was never in the media business. He didn't line his pockets with the proceeds of social division and chaos. Quite apart from anything Chauvin did, the media profiteers showed themselves un-American, even inhuman in their disregard for public order and the common good. They did incalculable harm to the society we share, and we can never dig up enough blame to bury them so deep as they deserve.
But save a share of that blame for Derek Chauvin. He gave them the closest thing they will ever get to their narrative wet-dream. It is thanks to Chauvin committing his crime on camera, that we have those iconic images which so compellingly touched the heartstrings of guilty white liberals.
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter aka BLM is well-known as a charitable organization whose mission is to provide services for social change. The primary service provided by BLM is logistic and organizational support for roving bands of virtuous, peaceful social activists. To assist these selfless crusaders in their mission to elevate humanity, BLM provides free bus travel, continental breakfast, and pallets of bricks for building baroque art museums and gardens.
To prove their solidarity with the oppressed people of Minneapolis, BLM activists systematically pillaged and burned parts of the city to the ground. This was such an inspiring model for social change, that it caught on in cities across the nation. At the same time, BLM made a series of savvy real-estate investments in the greater Los Angeles area. Some people are so uptight as to say it should be illegal to get rich by this method.
As a nascent movement, Black Lives Matter existed long before the Chauvin incident. Only in 2020 did BLM became a juggernaut. The aforementioned guilty white liberals poured something like eighty million dollars into BLM's coffers.
If not for Derek Chauvin, they wouldn't have done that.
The Thin Blue Line
The guilty white liberals didn't just throw their financial support behind Black Lives Matter. They withdrew their support from law enforcement, as such. Guilty white liberals aren't bad people, just sometimes they all act in concert without thinking things through. By common delusion or despair, they gave up on public order and the common good. Rioting, looting, vagrancy, street crime...the guilty white liberals resigned themselves to these things. Don't call it stupidity, it's just a different order of moral values. They felt they deserved it, or had no right to stand up to it, or something. They felt guilty.
Public demoralization and chaos broke out in cities across the nation, and the police were most demoralized of all. Reviled by the public, held in check by idiotic rules of engagement, kneecapped by politically-motivated prosecutors, and watching their communities go to literal shit; good cops resigned in droves, a trend which continues to this day. The institutional damage can maybe be mended - a Herculean task - but it can't be reversed. The situation will remain dire for the foreseeable future.
To examine causes and effects in this context is to tread in fathomless waters. No one person or principle is to blame.
But public demoralization found soil, took root in the shadow of Derek Chauvin.
Don't Call It Murder
It's not Derek Chauvin's fault there are guilty white liberals. It's not his fault they made so much of his crime. In a sane society, it would have been local news: strange and shocking, but nothing to justify our concerted national attention, let alone all this.
What if it had been just local news? What if all the other damage didn't happen? What's the real crime?
Every state in our glorious Union has its own statutes, and to some extent its own legal culture. If you are considering whether anthropology might be the right hobby for you, compare and contrast the murder statutes in Minnesota and, say, Georgia. By comparative studies of this kind, you’ll soon notice e.g. this state is very serious about property crime, that state brooks no crimes against children, and the other state is most concerned about crimes committed with weapons. Thus do the laboratories of democracy embark on noble experiments for the common good, usually with positive results.
For all this variation, state codes of law in America must pass Constitutional muster, and they all take their fundamentals from the Common Law which existed for centuries before the Constitution. Travel freely to all fifty states; so long as you don't go to the District of Columbia or Colony Ridge, you won't find yourself in a truly foreign legal culture, but you may find broad differences in legal usage and language.
As with legal codes, so too with policing. From state to state, from county to county, police training, culture and local priorities differ. But they all have to answer to the Constitution and Common Law fundamentals. There is something like a standard template for police use of force in America.
An excellent development of that template is New Jersey's 2022 Use of Force Policy. Say what you will about the governor of New Jersey, the attorney general was on the ball when he commissioned this document. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know how Real Cops think about these things.
Of course Derek Chauvin in Minnesota in 2020 wouldn't have been trained according to 2022 policy in New Jersey. There may be nuances and refinements in the New Jersey document Chauvin never heard of. These things evolve; fashions change; new ideas percolate through. But the fundamentals don't change from time to time or place to place. Minnesota use-of-force policy hits all the same high notes as in New Jersey, but the Minnesota document is a Model which leaves it to local jurisdictions to fill in the blanks. It is easier to understand the Minnesota Model if you read the New Jersey policy first. In New Jersey, the entire use-of-force policy for the whole state is in one convenient document. The New Jersey policy doesn't use jargon; it is complete, concise and superbly organized.
All guidelines in the New Jersey policy derive from seven Core Principles:
The Sanctity of Human Life and Serving the Community.
Force as a Last Resort and Duty to De-Escalate.
Duty to Use Only Objectively Reasonable, Necessary, and Proportional Force.
Duty to Use Deadly Force Only as an Absolute Last Resort and Duty to Avoid Actions Which Create a Substantial Risk of Death or Serious Bodily Injury.
Duty to Intervene and Report.
Duty to Render Medical Assistance.
Duty to Report and Review Uses of Force.
Of particular interest are sections 2.7 and 2.8 (page 12), dealing with suspects who act unusual. Section 3.6 (page 17) is a comprehensive discussion of positional asphyxiation.
Reading over the policy, one is forcibly impressed by the common sense, the rightness, the justice, the righteousness of all its provisions. Gentle Reader, in the unlikely event you or a loved one should ever be mistaken for a criminal suspect, how dismayed might you be to find these rules violated in your case? An officer who disregards these rules is antisocial in a way no mere criminal can ever be. The moral force of the use-of-force policy is greater than the ordinary force of the law itself. This is the contract by which we delegate the state monopoly on violence: a most hallowed investment of the public trust.
Derek Chauvin directly violated Core Principles 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. He caused, or intended to cause violations of Principles 5 and 7. In the course of these violations, Officer Chauvin caused the death of a member of the public whom he was sworn to protect and serve.
That's not murder. Murder is nothing, compared to that.
We don't have a convenient legal term for it; in the old days they might have called it Slaughter Under Trust or Massacre. It is oath-breaking. It is usurpation, rebellion, bloody revolution. It is treason to the state and to the people alike.
Derek Chauvin is no murderer; real murderers spit his name. Chauvin's a slaughterer, a killer with a badge, an oath-breaker.
Tou Thao
Most cops are good cops, or at least they are real cops. Some cops are bad at their jobs. A few cops are just plain bad: criminals with badges. When a truly bad cop self-outs, it always turns out there was more than one. Criminal cops need partners, too.
Tou Thao was a knowing, willing, active, effective accomplice to the killing of George Floyd. Thao's crime is complementary and equal to Chauvin's. He is by rights a co-conspirator, a co-defendant who put himself on the exact same hook as Derek Chauvin. Anything you can say about Chauvin you can say about Thao by extension.
The Milgram Experiment
From the wikipedia article:
The Milgram Experiment...measured the willingness of study participants, 40 men...to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. Participants were led to believe that they were assisting an unrelated experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to a "learner". These fake electric shocks gradually increased to levels that would have been fatal had they been real.
The experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of subjects would fully obey and [act on] the instructions, with every participant going up to 300 volts, and 65% going up to the full 450 volts.
Stanley Milgram, the guy who dreamed this thing up, was a psychologist who specialized in human obedience. He had a couple of theories to explain the results:
Conformism: In a moment of confusion and doubt, a human experimental subject will seek affirmation and avoid disapproval. If another person is not in confusion or doubt, the subject will tend to emulate/affirm that person.
Agency: The subject rationalizes that he's just doing as he's told, so it's not his fault if what he's doing is bad.
That's some good common-sense 1960s psychology. Psychology is well and good; cognitive stress and impairment is also an important factor.
Every subject in the Milgram experiment showed outward signs of stress, with several experiencing fits of nervous laughter. The stress was caused by cognitive dissonance. The subjects had to simultaneously process two inputs running crosswise:
This experiment is dangerous and wrong. Is it even possible for a human to survive a 450-volt shock?
The other person in the room, the experimenter, seems reasonable. The experimenter insists on continuing. The experimenter does not seem concerned, at all, about the high-voltage shocks.
Subjects voiced their objections, tried to talk their way out of it, offered to give the money back. The protocol of the experiment, even the layout of the room, was designed to frustrate such escape attempts. The only way out was to flatly refuse to continue, at the risk of the experimenter's disapproval.
Most subjects denied the evidence of their senses, and continued the experiment. Someone made a good point about this: the subjects didn’t do wrong, because the shocks were not real. No matter what, the subjects were forced to deny one thing or the other: either the reasonable-seeming experimenter wasn't really reasonable, or the dangerous-seeming experiment wasn't really dangerous.
Right or wrong, cognitive dissonance always ends in denial. The process by which a stressed-out, downshifted brain chooses which input to deny may be unreliable.
The Milgram experiment hints at how psychologically-normal people can perpetrate mob violence or wartime atrocities. It also sheds light on common, familiar forms of psychological manipulation.
Gaslighting is a well-known tactic of manipulation and abuse. Caught out or called out for his abusive behavior, the abuser stays calm, acts normal, and casts himself into the "reasonable person" role. The abuser reframes the situation so that the victim is the one being unreasonable. This causes intense cognitive dissonance, confusion and emotional upset. The abuser can then construe these things as instability or mental illness, heightening the victim's self-doubt and setting the stage for ever-worsening cycles of abuse.
Milgram's test subjects favored the perception that the experimenter was reasonable, over the perception that the experiment was dangerous and wrong. In a sense they were correct: the experiment was not as it seemed. But what if the shocks had been real? What if the experimenter was forced to participate under duress, knowing the shocks were real? You would expect the experimenter, like the subject, to show outward signs of stress. Noticing these signs, subjects would favor the perception of the experiment as dangerous and wrong. Probably no subject would cooperate if the experimenter seemed stressed.
Now, what if the experimenter knew the shocks were real, but acted normal anyway? Then you would see subjects truly behaving contrary to their interests and consciences. And you would have to say the experimenter was not a normal person.
Manipulative personality types - sociopaths, narcissists, and the like - continuously shift the psychosocial frame so as to put others at a disadvantage. They mostly don't do it as a conscious skill; the behavior is almost fully automatic, fundamental to the functioning of the personality. This is colloquially called a reality distortion field. Some of the effects it can have on a normal person would be impossible to credit if the official paperwork wasn't on file.
The following is based on the true story of a dissolute, spoiled-rotten young white man, who invited an older acquaintance for a night of drinks and cocaine. The men enticed a young woman and got her black-out drunk. Over the next few hours, the young man's new friend took increasing liberties with the young woman's unresisting body. The young man was not inclined to participate, but his new friend was able to recruit him to rape the girl one time. After that the older man battered the girl, leaving marks of violence. The young man may have been thinking of excusing himself at that point, but it was his house, and then his new friend produced a shotgun and said: "We've got to cover this up." So this dumb, entitled, stoned-out-of-his-mind kid who just wanted to party all night, instead witnessed a murder in the wee hours and helped to dispose of the evidence. He was caught and sent to prison as an accomplice, but the girl's parents forgave him after he wept in the courtroom.
Acting normal when things aren't normal (or treating a normal reaction like a weird reaction) triggers cognitive dissonance, psychological stress and denial. It's not a magic power; it doesn't always work; but when it works it distorts a person's perception of what is normal. If a manipulator is clever about how he tightens the screws, he can induce a susceptible person to doubt his own sanity, act against his own interests, even do terrible things.
Thomas Lane
Thomas Lane was the first officer to encounter George Floyd, and the last to remain with him. Lane's conduct has been widely criticized, in some cases unfairly. The most cogent criticism, and the basis of the criminal complaint against Lane, is that he violated what New Jersey calls Core Principle 5: Duty to Intervene. There are two arguments to answer this:
Lane did intervene: he spoke three times to Chauvin. It's not his fault the intervention didn't succeed.
Lane's ability to intervene was impaired by factors beyond his control.
Neither of these arguments is heartily satisfactory, but both are plausible; both raise reasonable doubt. (The second point could also be made in Kueng's defense.)
When Floyd began to show signs of respiratory distress, Lane spoke for the first time:
Lane: "Roll him on his side?"
Chauvin: "(inaudible) staying where we got him."
Lane: "OK. I just worry about the...excited delirium or whatever."
Chauvin: "That's fine, we got the ambulance comin'."
Lane: "OK. It's close."
Lane spoke for the second time when Floyd became unresponsive: "Yeah, I think he's passing out." Of course unresponsiveness is always an emergency until proven otherwise. Lane was the only officer to verbally acknowledge this critical juncture. Note the passiveness of his language.
When a person becomes unresponsive from asphyxiation, that indicates a blood oxygen saturation of about 60% or less. Floyd had been in a struggle; his whole body was in a state of increased oxygen demand. The instant he stopped breathing, his oxygen saturation would have plummeted. That would clobber Floyd's respiratory drive, meaning he would need ventilation in order to recover. Floyd's heart was slightly enlarged, which can only increase oxygen demand. Once he became unresponsive, Floyd had to be in cardiac arrest within seconds. Thus, Lane spoke at the very last moment it might have been possible to save Floyd's life.
About a minute later, Donald's voice started almost to crack, and Lane spoke for the third time; so quietly that Kueng's camera, three feet away, didn't pick it up:
Thao (bellows): "Back off!"
Donald: "He's not responsive right now! He's not responsive right now!"
Lane: "Roll him on his side?"
Donald: "He's not responsive right now bro? No bro look at him he's not responsive right now bro. Bro are you serious?"
By this time, Chauvin and Kueng's "restraint" of Floyd was performative. Rolling Floyd on his side would also have been performative; Floyd would not have breathed if they let him.
With the benefit of hindsight, Lane should have intervened more forcefully. But Thomas Lane did not have the benefit of hindsight; he had to live in that moment.
The basic inputs Lane had to process were:
Officer Chauvin's conduct is dangerous and wrong. Can a person even survive that kind of restraint?
The three other officers on the scene seem reasonable. They insist on continuing. They do not seem concerned, at all, about the suspect dying.
If you asked Stanley Milgram, he would say that Lane, beset by confusion and doubt, would be likely to conform with his fellow officers. Lane would be seeking affirmation and dreading disapproval. But Lane's situation was much worse than anything Milgram ever did to his subjects. Lane was already in a state of confusion and doubt before the crisis. He went from being in nominal command to being bumped out of the action; after that, his loss of confidence was palpable. He already felt disapproved of. He was already seeking to ingratiate himself with the other officers; they were Lane's society, and he was somewhat in the character of an outcast.
Milgram's other theory was agency, and here also Lane was at a disadvantage. Chauvin was in command, a nineteen-year veteran; Lane was a rookie. Chauvin had formal authority over Lane, far greater than the symbolic authority of a white coat and a clipboard. Lane was trained in advance to be subordinate to Chauvin's agency in a situation like this.
The Milgram test subjects had nothing to lose by defecting from the experiment, yet they all cooperated. Thomas Lane had everything to lose if he defected from Chauvin's command. Put yourself in Lane's position:
Officer Chauvin is not responding to your friendly suggestions. What if it's not enough just to say, "Chauvin, don't do that. Get off him. Roll him on his side"?
In that case, you might have to shout. You might have to touch Officer Chauvin. You might have to get on the radio immediately to report his misconduct. Whatever you choose, Chauvin will know he's got a mutiny on his hands. What could go wrong?
Chauvin might escalate to shouting and/or shoving. What could go wrong?
People on the sidewalk are already shouting and/or shoving. Any one of them could be any kind of threat. How will they react to cop-on-cop action? Is it safe?
Kueng and/or Thao might join the action on Chauvin's side. You could be the next one to get dogpiled.
After all that, what if somehow you're wrong? You could be busted for active insubordination. Ruined, if you somehow make that mistake.
Chauvin might stop, any second. You can't be sure he's going to keep this up. Any second, all by itself, this could all just go away.
It's too late.
In real time, Thomas Lane had about one minute to sort out these considerations. It was the last minute of Floyd's life, when Floyd was in audible respiratory distress. Had Floyd been relieved during that minute, he could have recovered without help. Lane said he was worried about excited delirium, and Chauvin reassured Lane that there was a plan. Lane accepted this.
And then Floyd became unresponsive, and Derek Chauvin didn't alter his plan: the real plan, the plan to kill Floyd. Nothing in Lane's training or experience could possibly have prepared him for that. For the first few seconds, he must have wondered when Chauvin was going to stop. Then it was too late, and it turned out Chauvin wasn't going to stop. There was no window of opportunity for Lane to act. George Floyd was in cardiac arrest before Thomas Lane could have been sure it was time to forcefully intervene.
Even before this, Lane may have been uncomfortable with Chauvin's rough treatment of Floyd. His tendency was to rationalize it: "I can't breathe!" "He must be on something."
After Floyd stopped breathing, Lane's head must have been in a blender, thinking "Either I'm crazy, or that man is dead." Well, if you're crazy, you probably shouldn't do anything, and if it's too late, maybe you have no duty to intervene. When Lane finally spoke, it was almost in a whisper.
Lane went deep into denial. Here's one of several examples:
Kueng takes his knee off Floyd's hips. A medic approaches and palpates Floyd's neck with two fingers for several seconds, then strolls away.
Donald: "...do that, bro? Are you serious? Bro are you serious?"
Lane: "Put him in the car? Put him in the car? ..."
Chauvin: "Um. Let's get him on..."
The whine of an electric-lift gurney is heard. Kueng puts his knee back on top of Floyd's hips.
At this point, Floyd had been dead for almost four minutes. Thomas Lane seems to have thought they could put Floyd in the car, and Floyd would open his eyes, and the medics would look him over and deem him fit for non-medical transport.
It wasn't until he got on board the ambulance that Lane started to re-orient. Ironically, it was now Lane who became anxious at the prospect of being transported in the rear compartment of an emergency response vehicle. In his gut, he knew George Floyd was a corpse and he didn't want to be in a metal box with that.
Medic Smith knew, once the ambulance was in a safe place, he would have to attempt to resuscitate Floyd; if he did not, he could be accused of abandoning the patient. At the same time, he knew Floyd had been dead for at least three minutes (the actual number was closer to six). So Smith shifted his assessment focus to Thomas Lane. When a medic finds a patient dead, he can't do anything for the deceased. But sometimes, the survivors are so affected as to become patients in their own right. The medic must assess the survivors to make sure they're okay, and offer care if they're not. To some extent, Medic Smith took on a caring role towards Thomas Lane (he may also have been just a little bit wary). Smith listened carefully and acknowledged everything Lane said. Lane, still in denial, tried to rationalize what Chauvin had done.
****
From the moment Thomas Lane made contact with Floyd, to the moment Lane got the cuffs on, was two minutes. During this time, Floyd didn't show his hands, kept trying to get out of the car, then wouldn't get out of the car, then got out of the car and resisted being handcuffed. That period of time was the only time Floyd might reasonably have been perceived as a threat. That whole time, Lane was alone with Floyd. If anyone had justification to get rough with George Floyd, it was Thomas Lane.
Thomas Lane did get pretty rough with Floyd. Up until Chauvin and Kueng took over, Thomas Lane had by far the most hands-on time with George Floyd. Lane had many opportunities to seriously injure or kill Floyd. At one point, he could have hurt Floyd badly just by letting Floyd's head fall to the pavement.
Of the three officers who put hands on Floyd, Thomas Lane is the only one to avoid hurting him. Lane never applied excessive force. He didn't use astronaut gloves. Lane made Floyd cry a couple of times, but he never made Floyd yelp or groan. Even under pressure, Lane could usually get Floyd to cooperate by gently touching him. By various gestures, Lane acknowledged his duty of care to Floyd, a duty the other officers utterly neglected; if anything, Lane was implicitly penalized for not being forceful enough.
Had Thomas Lane's judgment and leadership somehow prevailed, the fatal escalation probably wouldn't have happened, and in no scenario would George Floyd end up dead. Lane tried to talk Officer Chauvin out of it two or three times. The circumstances raise not merely reasonable, but considerable doubt as to Lane's duty and ability to intervene.
But they busted him for not intervening, and he's in prison.
J. Alexander Kueng
In my opinion, J. Alexander Kueng is psychologically unfit to be a Peace Officer. My reasons are too pedantic to bother with; suffice to say that maybe I can't treat Kueng fairly.
Did Kueng commit a crime?
Kueng's conduct aligned closely with Chauvin's. Kueng's restraint of George Floyd's hips contributed to the deadly mechanism of injury. Kueng knew, or should have knowm, that this restraint would kill a person. On the other hand, killing George Floyd wasn't Kueng's idea; he didn't start it; there's no real reason to believe Kueng would do something like that on his own initiative.
Kueng does not seem to have understood that George Floyd was dead. Maybe he had magical ideas about emergency medicine; maybe he thought the medics could cure a dead person. Kueng did not evince the insecurity you'd expect from a man who knows he's in trouble. On the contrary, Kueng seems to have felt strongly affirmed, as though he received a battlefield promotion. He strutted around with his chest out, barking orders at Thomas Lane, his senior partner. All this raises doubt as to whether Kueng was a knowing, willing accomplice: no situational awareness, no consciousness of guilt.
We can't rule out the possibility that Kueng was somehow in on the conspiracy. But a more satisfactory explanation is that Kueng was an intellectual flotsamweight and he was simply swept along in Chauvin's wake. Thomas Lane saw what Chauvin was doing, and experienced a psychological breakdown. J. Alexander Kueng saw the same thing, and just did what Chauvin was doing.
That's one theory anyway. Kueng's conduct remains unexplained. But some of the blame for his conduct must surely fall on Chauvin and Thao. Also, someone pinned a badge on Kueng in the first place; whoever did that has some explaining to do.
I could almost accept that Kueng was incompetent to stand trial; the man doesn't even know he's not black.
But he's busted, and he's in prison.
Derek Chauvin
Derek Chauvin put George Floyd in the morgue. He put two officers in prison, who otherwise wouldn't have been involved in a crime.
Even before Chauvin, the Minneapolis PD suffered from a poor public image. But nobody would have imagined the crushing discredit and shame which Chauvin brought on the Minneapolis PD. Even if the mainstream media and BLM had kept their filthy hands to themselves, rioting in Minneapolis would have been likely, similar to what happened in Baltimore after the mortal in-custody wounding of Freddie Gray. The personal effect on Chauvin's fellow officers, especially the senior leadership, had to be devastating. They lost control of the city because of Chauvin and Thao.
Everyone who witnessed the killing was badly shaken. Derek Chauvin owes those people about two thousand hours of sleep. He owes a great deal more to the victims of arson, vandalism, and looting in Minneapolis. By gutting the police, Chauvin literally knocked the roof in over citizens' heads.
Why did he do it? Take your pick or roll your own:
He had a hangup about big, sexy black men.
He's a pure sadist; he did it because he could.
It was some kind of initiation for Kueng and/or Lane. If Chauvin had gotten away with it, Kueng and Lane would have been dirty: they would have witnessed a murder, failed to intervene, failed to report. Dirty cops want to get clean cops dirty, for obvious reasons. People with something to hide keep secrets better.
Just One More Thing
Derek Chauvin did not profit by his act. He received a long jail term, and he reportedly has been stabbed twenty-something times by a fellow inmate. He is unlikely ever to be a free man again.
He should have seen that coming. Minutes before it was too late, Chauvin should have known his odds of getting away with this massacre were non-existent; too many witnesses. It’s one thing to find a person has no conscience. It’s another thing again, to find his self-interest can’t be appealed to either.
Nothing could hold Chauvin back. He defied conscience, law, society, and any future he may have had. Derek Chauvin is not only capable of homicidal violence on impulse, he is not equipped with any kind of brakes, at all.
When Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in the middle of the street, he knew everyone was looking at him. Chauvin had a badge and a gun for nineteen years.
What did he do when nobody was looking?
(Forward to Part Seven: The Death Of George Floyd)