George Floyd: Myth vs Facts

With the trial of Officer Derek Chauvin underway in the Hennepin County courthouse (jury selection is underway), it might be a good time to revisit the circumstances of George Floyd’s death.

David Read has done a yeoman’s job of detailing the myths and the facts of Floyd’s death.

Read notes:

“Who was George Floyd? A criminal, for one thing.  Floyd had several drug arrests on his rap sheet. His most serious offense was a home-invasion robbery in which he held a gun to a pregnant woman’s belly, a crime for which he served five years in a Texas jail. Originally from Houston, Floyd moved to Minneapolis and, at the time of his death last May, was working as a bouncer at a nightclub.”

These are facts that no one disputes.  Floyd’s crimes are a matter of public record.  Also well known is the fact that he worked as a bouncer for a nightclub.  Also known by most of the public is that he died while lying on a Minneapolis street with Officer Chauvin keeping him prone by the use of his knee on Floyd’s neck.

The Myth:

Read notes:

“Chauvin mercilessly crushed out Floyd’s life by smashing his knee down on Floyd’s trachea and holding it there, as three of his fellow-officers looked on approvingly at the murder and declined to intervene, even though Floyd was repeatedly saying he could not breathe. Nothing but calloused, depraved-heart racism can explain why the police randomly chose to snuff out Floyd’s life that day.”

What is true here is that Floyd complained he could not breathe.  He was complaining long before he was placed in a prone position on the street.  The rest is a narrative spun up by leftist media types to advance a Marxist agenda in this country.  It was done to try to tear the country apart over his death.

The Truth:

The truth is that George Floyd was dying of an opioid overdose, and would have died even had he never come within 10 miles of a police officer. The knee on the neck is a restraint technique officers are trained to use in cases of “excited delirium,” meaning when a subject is high on drugs, behaving crazily, and not complying with police orders.  Because his lungs were filling with fluid, Floyd complained repeatedly of not being able to breathe while he was still upright, beforehe was put under restraint.  The neck restraint does not cut off air through the trachea nor blood flow through the carotid arteries. 

George Floyd was not killed by Minneapolis police officers.

If George Floyd was not killed by Officer Chauvin, then who was the cause of his death?  The fact is that George Floyd caused his own death.  He ingested a lethal amount of fentanyl.

Read notes:

The evidence most pertinent to our inquiry is the autopsy performed by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner (ME), Dr. Andrew Baker, and the toxicology screen that was done later using blood samples drawn from Floyd’s body.

Per the toxicology report (p. 14 onward of autopsy report), George Floyd had a large amount of Fentanyl (11 ng/mL—nannograms per milliliter) in his system.

…

Fentanyl is extremely potent.  It is between 80 and 100 times more potent than morphine. It is the most potent painkiller in the armamentarium, the medicines available for prescription.

In addition, Floyd had 5.6 ng/mL of Norfentanyl, which is a major metabolite of Fentanyl, and an independently scheduled controlled substance.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, opioids, particularly synthetic ones like fentanyl, are the main driver of drug overdose deaths in this country.  George Floyd was just another such victim.  The levels in his system were well beyond known fatal levels.

Read goes on to detail the exact nature of the problems that Floyd was experiencing and how they related to a fentanyl overdose.  Read’s presentation is painstaking and thorough.  I recommend that it be read to fully understand just what happened in this case.  In other words to understand the facts of the case.  George Floyd died of opioid-induced pulmonary edema.

So, why were the officers charged?  Minneapolis was burning to ground.  The local justice system probably felt that charging the officers might alleviate some of the angst felt by the public over the video that had gone viral.  They made the charges BEFORE the toxicology report was received.  This was similar to what happened in Baltimore over the Freddie Gray death.  All the officers in that case were acquitted.  And the details of Gray’s death were not as clear as the details here.

What is more troubling here is that the charges are still being pursued.

Prosecutors Patrick Lofton and Amy Sweasy, the latter well regarded for her work prosecuting Mohamed Noor in the Justine Damon case, met remotely with the ME via Microsoft’s version of “zoom.”  Sweasy prepared a memo dated June 1, 2020, documenting what was said at this meeting, including that 11 ng/mL is “a fatal level of Fentanyl under normal circumstances” and that “if Mr. Floyd had been found dead at home and there were no other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death.”

So the prosecutors knew that Floyd died of a drug overdose and withheld that information until late August.  Yet still they proceeded with the case against the officers.

As Read notes:

This case should already have been dismissed and the officers compensated for the false arrest and false charges made in a rush to judgment under threat of mob violence. As we daily witness more and still more of America’s institutions creak, groan, shudder, and collapse before the remorseless onslaught of Leftist totalitarianism, one wonders if justice is any longer to be found in our courts.

After the debacle in the courts regarding the obvious election fraud, there is no need to wonder.  If you think the wrong way, they will come after you.  If you can be made an example of, they will come after you.  Just look at the number of arrests for walking through the Capitol Building on January 6^th after being invited in by the Capitol police and compare that to the number of arrests in Washington during the summer riots.

One conclusion that Read reaches is that “the media are not trustworthy.  They have an agenda, a Leftist, anti-American narrative to promote.  Whatever the media says, you can pretty much count on the truth being otherwise, usually the exact, 180 degree opposite.”

As most of us here would say, that’s no surprise.  Most of us have known that for a long time.