George Floyd had coronavirus, autopsy says

[Zzyzx_Road]

True enough. But there is a legal question of just how much was Floyd responsible for the reaction of the police. As King was.

I agree 8 minutes was too long, but I also think dealing with a large and possibly strong out of control arrestee is an extremely stressful undertaking. One has to search really hard to find out how big King was to begin with which goes a long way toward explaining why it was so hard to subdue him. That information isn’t on his Wikipedia page, for instance.

We know Floyd was a big guy, not as big as King, but we’re not being told anywhere how big he is.

 

[KMC]

Zzyzx_Road:

So the big question and my big curiosity is: is there more video of what happened inside the store, video of what happened on Floyd’s way out of the store, etc.? Is there more to this than the media is reporting. Because they didn’t report every last thing with King either.

No, they didn’t report every last thing with King, not the high speed chase etc. With Floyd, however, short of him killing a group of nuns in the store I can’t think of anything to justify kneeling on a man’s neck for 8 minutes.

To me there are two separate issues here:

1. The cop’s knee on the neck of Floyd for 8 minutes
2. The media’s constant “crafting” of narratives…i.e. selective editing

They might overlap here and in the King case, but two issues also need to be looked at individually as well.

 

[F_Marturana]

3 of which were after there was no pulse.

 

[StudentMI]

3 of which were after there was no pulse.

True. Such a sad case.

 

[PetraG]

It is good that these are outdoor protests, but I am very concerned that too many of the protesters don’t seem to care as much about preventing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 as they ought to.

This is already a disease that has disproportionately struck non-white and less-affluent populations. It is also a disease that healthy people can pick up and pass around asymptomatically. It is transmitted more by yelling or singing than by talking at normal volume. People who are protesting (or doing anything else) without physical distancing are not just putting their own lives at risk.

Viruses do not put themselves on hold for a worthy cause. Wanting to preserve the economy was (and is) a worthy cause. Wanting to protest police brutality is a worthy cause. COVID-19 does not respect good intentions, though. Public gatherings, even if deemed urgently necessary for political expression, really need to be held with great care.

Honestly, if placing a restriction is necessary for public worship, that restriction needs to apply everywhere. Saving lives is saving lives.

 

[StudentMI]

Viruses do not put themselves on hold for a worthy cause. Wanting to preserve the economy was (and is) a worthy cause. Wanting to protest police brutality is a worthy cause. COVID-19 does not respect good intentions, though. Public gatherings, even if deemed urgently necessary for political expression, really need to be held with great care.

Agreed. They should be practicing social distancing and other measures to keep people safe. I do appreciate the large amount of masks I’ve seen among them.

 

[PetraG]

Yes, just like with the economic protests, some people get it and some people seem to think their important message is so important that it suspends the laws of nature.

Well, let’s pray they’re lucky and do little to make the pandemic worse and particularly that they don’t transmit suffering to people who had no part in their decision-making.

 

[Nepperhan]

We know Floyd was a big guy, not as big as King, but we’re not being told anywhere how big he is.

Floyd was 6’6", which is bigger than Rodney King was. But, as I had to tell my kids often, ‘Bigger does not mean you are numb’.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Floyd was 6’6", which is bigger than Rodney King was. But, as I had to tell my kids often, ‘Bigger does not mean you are numb’.

Which makes him bigger than everyone in his vicinity the vast majority of the time. I’m not excusing 8 minutes knee on neck, but have to keep in mind when a large man resists arrest it takes multiple numbers of cops to restrain him without shooting him. In this case, the restraining him part got out of hand and we’re here now.

In the King case, the commanding officer gave the order early on for the cops on the scene keep their guns holstered. That order likely saved King’s life at the cost of the tasing and beating he received instead. It’s easy in retrospect to say King didn’t deserve the beating, but that’s speaking without knowing the degree of King’s resistance to that point and without knowing that King was 25 years old and 6-4, 240. Basically the size of a defensive lineman in football. What should the cops have done to get a man that size under control? You tell me.

 

[PetraG]

Floyd was 6’6", which is bigger than Rodney King was. But, as I had to tell my kids often, ‘Bigger does not mean you are numb’.

Something Cam Newton and Ben Roethlisberger understand very well, I’m sure.
I didn’t mean that in an entirely tongue-in-cheek way. NFL quarterbacks that are hard to bring down get hit much harder without drawing a flag.
It is still possible to draw a roughing the QB flag when playing against them; likewise, there is an amount of force against a physically-imposing suspect that is still simply too much force.

It’s easy in retrospect to say King didn’t deserve the beating, but that’s speaking without knowing the degree of King’s resistance to that point and without knowing that King was 25 years old and 6-4, 240. Basically the size of a defensive lineman in football. What should the cops have done to get a man that size under control? You tell me.

Retrospect, nothing. What happened to him needs to not happen again. Ever.

Please do not tell me that law enforcement teach what was done to Rodney King as part of the professional techniques that are sometimes necessary to subdue a large and physically powerful suspect. The pictures wouldn’t be allowed on a family site. He was hit with a baton 56 times. He was left with 11 skull fractures.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Please do not tell me that law enforcement teach what was done to Rodney King as part of the professional techniques that are sometimes necessary to subdue a large and physically powerful suspect. The pictures wouldn’t be allowed on a family site. He was hit with a baton 56 times. He was left with 11 skull fractures.

Point taken.

How would you have got King under control?

 

[RidgeSprinter]

I would have been sufficiently agitated if I got stuck with a bad $20 bill.

Same here as well.

 

[PetraG]

Point taken.

How would you have got King under control?

The LAPD has found ways. One was to stop using the heavy baton that was used frequently at that time.

The LAPD has also changed training to give officers more techniques to end altercations with suspects more quickly and less violently. A study by the LAPD a few years after the King beating showed about 62% of altercations between suspects and police officers ended with a struggle on the ground.

Murphy said department trainers developed techniques with martial arts experts on overcoming suspects quickly when they are on the ground.

"I am very confident we know how to take him down now,” Murphy said of King. “It is a matter of leverage and technique”…

Last year, the LAPD began a new push to teach officers how to de-escalate tensions without resorting to violence.

Between the new training and less-lethal weapons, Murphy and others hope an incident like the Rodney King case would end up differently today.

The goal, Murphy said, is simple: “We’d talk to him longer, not beat him.”

How the Rodney King beating 'banished' the baton from the LAPD

When the video of Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney G.

www.latimes.com

As for the violent rioting that followed, Rodney King himself decried it. It was also the wrong response.

 

[PetraG]

I would have been sufficiently agitated if I got stuck with a bad $20 bill.

Let’s also keep in mind that there are families in danger because of mentally ill family members because the family will not call the police because they know about times when such a call ended for other families in their situation with the mentally ill family member winding up dead.

Ending domestic abuse is going to be hard if the abuse victims are afraid that calling for help will end up in a member of their family being killed or seriously injured. They want the violence to stop, not to transfer it to their family member that is out of control.

 

[Cathoholic]

KMC . . .

I agree that the knee on the neck caused the death…certainly the drugs in the body worked against him.

Yes I agree from what I have seen that Floyd died from the knee on his neck too.

The question is, are the people who have been calling incidental findings of corona virus at death
a “corona virus death”, . . .
. . . are THEY going to be consistent and call George Floyd’s death a “corona virus death” too?

 

[PetraG]

. . . are THEY going to be consistent and call George Floyd’s death a “corona virus death” too?

I think the autopsy said he was COVID-19 positive, not that he had evidence of pneumonia, endocarditis, etc.

 

[Cathoholic]

Yes. That would be an incidental finding of corona virus at death.

 

[PetraG]

Yes. That would be an incidental finding of corona virus at death.

It is going to be very difficult to sort out how many of the excess deaths during the pandemic were directly due to the virus and which were primarily due to some other agent. In all likelihood, the number of dead who could not be properly autopsied will make it impossible to determine that as well as we might like. For instance, if someone died because their care was delayed in order to keep them from contracting coronavirus–a reasonable medical decision for a patient in a high-risk group–that is an excess death associated with the pandemic but not directly due to infection with the virus.

 

[RidgeSprinter]

Looking at the toxicology report and comparing it to my sister’s?

Almost Identical 1to 7 with two exceptions, hers is missing Methamphetamine and Continine
She is on a “Fentanyl Patch” and on “Medical THC”.
Had to google Cotinine: Cotinine is an alkaloid found in tobacco and is also the predominant metabolite of nicotine.

B: interesting that his blood alcohol levels were negative. That would be lead me to believe that he was on “Fentanyl Patch or Pills” and on “Medical THC” and was responsible enough not to mix alcohol with those two. Otherwise drug addicts normally have a positive indicator.

C: Had to google “Presumptive” because it raised a red flag. “presumed in the absence of further information” You’ve heard the saying "What Happens when you assume something?

The more research I do the more I become suspicious of the Coroner. And then we have the result of the second independent Autopsy. Conflicting at worse.

“Whether or not he was intoxicated or had medications in his system is irrelevant to the cause of death, which is homicide, which is death by the hand of another,” Floyd family attorney Antonio Romanucci told CNN. “The end result, which is George Floyd’s death, would not be any different.”

 

[Cathoholic]

PetraG . . .

It is going to be very difficult to sort out how many of the excess deaths during the pandemic were directly due to the virus and which were primarily due to some other agent.

Good point.

I think it will be impossible.

Add into the mix, other countries defining coronavirus deaths differently from one another and different from America (I have posted three articles elsewhere detailing some of this issue) and it is an absolute epidemiolgic quagmire.

Yet some people pretend we ave good numbers on these things and think they can adequately compare country deaths cases, etc.