The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

George Floyd and ‘The Riot Ideology’

Posted on | April 4, 2021 | Comments Off on George Floyd and ‘The Riot Ideology’

The best book on the failure of liberal urban policy is Fred Siegel’s The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities. Siegel devotes much analysis to the “riot ideology” whereby organized violence (or the threat thereof) is used to intimidate officials into doing the bidding of “community leaders.”

What we are witnessing in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is how the “riot ideology” impacts law enforcement. Because George Floyd was black, and because Officer Chauvin is white, there is no presumption of innocence. Chauvin’s guilt is assumed as a fact, and if he is not convicted, the verdict will be regarded as an injustice — “systemic racism” — as a pretext for a riot, much the same way the verdict in the Rodney King case inspired the Los Angeles riot of 1992.

From the standpoint of law enforcement, this is a lose-lose proposition. Either officers are effectively prohibited from enforcing the law — because cops face legal jeopardy if they attempt to apprehend a suspect who resists arrest — or else the city is destroyed by violence. This is “democracy” as mob rule, where the criminal element holds the entire community hostage with the assistance of “civil rights” activists (e.g., Ben Crump) and the liberal media. The narrative of racial “injustice” requires that certain inconvenient facts be made to disappear.

It should be obvious, for example, that Officer Chauvin and other members of the Minneapolis police were not just randomly killing black people to advance some “white supremacist” ideology. When cops were called to the Cup Foods store last May to deal with a counterfeiting case, they did not murder every black person present at the store. George Floyd was in the company of two black accomplices, Morries Lester Hall and Shawanda Renee Hill, both of whom had criminal records, but neither of whom was harmed by the police. How can “systemic racism” explain this?

Body camera footage from Officer Thomas Lane, one of the first two cops to arrive on the scene, shows George Floyd’s erratic behavior:

 

Floyd’s movement inside the SUV caused Lane to fear he might be reaching for a handgun, so he ordered Floyd at gunpoint to put both hands on the wheel, while he radioed for backup. Lane then told Floyd to put his hands on top of his head and step out of the vehicle (1:02 in the video). It took about 30 seconds to get Floyd to exit the vehicle, then another 30 seconds to get him handcuffed. After that, Lane leaves Floyd to his partner, Officer Alexander Keung, while Lane deals with Hall and Hill. Things take a turn for the worse when Lane and Keung try to put Floyd in the back of their squad car:

Lane: What, are you on something right now?
Floyd: No, nothing.
Kueng: Because you are acting a little erratic.
Lane: [leading Floyd to the car] Let’s go. Let’s go.
Floyd: I’m scared, man.
Lane: Let’s go.
Kueng: You got foam around your mouth, too?
Floyd: Yes, I was just hooping earlier.

We are told that “hooping” is slang for “putting drugs in the anus, resulting in a quick and intense high.” Is that how George Floyd got a dose of fentanyl that was three times the lethal level?

Floyd refused to sit in the squad car, saying he was “claustrophobic” and his resistance — Floyd was 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds — made it impossible. It was at Floyd’s request that the officers put him on the ground instead, but not before he had said seven times “I can’t breathe.”

 

The activist narrative insists these facts be ignored. They call it “victim blaming” when critics point to Floyd’s behavior, and assert, “Derek Chauvin is on trial, not George Floyd.” But you see that (a) there never would have been a trial if Floyd had simply gotten in the back of the squad car, (b) Floyd’s erratic behavior is evidence of the severity of his fentanyl overdose, and (c) how are cops supposed to deal with a drug-crazed giant who refuses to cooperate with his arrest?

Do we or don’t we want to enforce the law? That is the real question, and what sort of answer do we get if this question is reduced to the eight-minute video of Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck?

Too little consideration is being given to the larger social consequences of permitting the Black Lives Matter narrative to prevail, not just in this specific case, but in the general matter of how placing unreasonable limits on law enforcement will allow crime to proliferate. What happens if “social justice” makes it impossible for cops to do their jobs? Well, in Minnesota, the number of handgun permits increased last year to 96,554, up from 51,404 in 2019 — a one-year increase of 88%.

If cops can’t protect you — and Black Lives Matter is about destroying law-enforcement in America — you’ll have to protect yourself.

Liberal are not likely to be happy with the result.




 

Category: Crime, Minnesota, Racism

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