Justice for Floyd Finished?

The trial of Derek Chauvin finally reached its conclusion on Tuesday, and it came swiftly without much deliberation fortunately. An afternoon surprise that did not turn out the way I was expecting it to though. However, I’m actually extremely relieved and thankful that the verdict went down the way it did with guilty charges across the board. Not because I completely agree with all of the reasoning, but because the consequences could have devastated the entire country. All over one guy that we’ve never even heard from directly? It’s totally not worth it in my opinion, at least not yet. At best Derek Chauvin was an aggressive asshole, and a victim of bad circumstance. At worst, he’s a murderer that tried to kill George Floyd on purpose.

When this landmark story first broke, I thought it was going to be a repeat of Eric Garner all over again. Maybe George Floyd was just some poor guy out there trying to survive through life. But he was getting bullied by police because of some BS law that they were told to enforce. In the beginning, I believed that George Floyd was busted for trying to use a counterfeit $20 dollar bill to buy groceries to feed his family with. Then the police showed up suddenly to take him away! And their outrageous brutality and carelessness caused his death in the street.

But that was only the first few pieces of the story, and over the next several weeks and months we’ve learned a lot more about the facts of the case. Regardless, this entire event was a tragedy for just about everybody. George Floyd died that day on the pavement, and Derek Chauvin might spend the rest of his life in prison because of it. There were riots all over the country, and it was a mentally and morally exhausting issue that took up over a year’s worth of the news cycle.

I’ve collected some of the highlights here to show the bigger picture. I was off about the outcome though, and have to wonder where things went wrong with my equation. Was justice actually served in this example, or was it bent to the will of the protestors and political opportunists? Is it the truth that really matters, or is peace more important? I’m honestly not sure about any of these things, but it’s a fascinating study of history.

This was George Floyd’s last shopping trip where he was caught on camera buying cigarettes using counterfeit money. This video wasn’t made available until the trial began. George looks a little buzzed in this scene here, but no worries. He seems friendly enough and looks like he is having a good time.

Here are two witnesses that were close to Floyd in his final moments, including the cashier at the store.

We’ve all seen the terrible optics of Derek Chauvin’s knee on the back of George Floyd, but that was also very selectively edited. It took a while to get the extra footage, but it became very obvious that there was more to the story. George looks like he was high on something, and was resisting arrest. That doesn’t mean he deserved to die or anything, it’s just some needed facts and context.

This first (top) video is the best, but may be disturbing for some viewers. You’ll also have to ‘sign in’ through YouTube in order to watch it. The second video is much lower quality, but is ‘click-friendly.’

Later it turned out that George Floyd had been pulled over before, and had a similar reaction when confronted by an officer of the law.

The report on his cause of death is also alarming. According to this particular data, it looks like George was more likely to have died from all the drugs in his system than actual physical injuries inflicted by officers at the scene. Perhaps a fatal amount of Fentanyl to go with a heart condition along with the stress of being arrested possibly?

George Floyd’s girlfriend admitted in court that they both had serious opium addictions. In fact, he had just gotten out of treatment just a couple of months before his death!

As you can see, there were a lot of character concerns about George. He didn’t deserve to die that day, but I really thought Derek Chauvin was going to walk away from this as an accident. Maybe he was just a cop that was showing off and wasn’t aware of how severe Floyd’s health problems really were at that moment. Maybe George would normally have survived that distressing detainment. But then again, maybe he shouldn’t have resisted arrest. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken all that opium. Maybe he shouldn’t have been using illegal money to buy cigarettes. Maybe he should have made better life decisions. But those are all hypotheticals. Regardless, Derek Chauvin did not do himself any favors by kneeling there on top of George for a single second longer than he needed to. Especially when he was having problems breathing there. Especially when Floyd stopped moving. Especially when the people nearby were pleading with the Officer to show mercy on the man. That it seems, was all that mattered in the end.

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