George Floyd Revisited

Complete body camera footage has emerged detailing George Perry Floyd's final moments. Find out what the media will not tell you right here.

As the final month of 2020 accelerates onward, riots fueled by the combustive mixture of George Perry Floyd’s May 25, 2020 death and the constant refrain of “systemic racism” proclaimed by media outlets and groups such as Black Lives Matter Global Network ("BLM") remain a nightly ritual in many American cities. Calls to #DefundThePolice have generated spikes in violent crime across the United States that local governments decline to prosecute even while these same localities enforce ordinances preventing businesses in increasingly crime-ridden areas from erecting safety measures to defend property and customers. Indeed, just two weeks into the Floyd riots, more people of color were killed in violence associated with these riots than unarmed black civilians by police in all of 2019 according to data compiled by The Washington Post fatal force database.

Citizens across the United States were threatened and bullied into compliance if they remained silent or refused to recite mantras affirming that George Floyd’s death was proof-positive of the eternal specter of institutional racism. This was the rationale employed by pundits and intelligentsia across the political spectrum to flippantly regard the BLM protests as “fiery, but mostly peaceful," because, after all, as of September 5, 2020, “only” 7% of the 7,750 nationwide BLM marches had turned violent.

Quantifying “peace” as a percentage of total protests deemed not violent was one of many gaslighting techniques employed by the media to manufacture the large-scale embrace of revolutionary movements -- like BLM -- that openly tout Marxist ideological inspiration. As faithful sympathizers of, and adherents to, these movements, large segments of left-wing media and far-left Democrats demand submission and blind religious devotion to the affirmation of deliberately obtuse concepts like “systemic racism.” By employing such capricious metrics and means, surely a serial killer such as Ted Bundy might be characterized as “mostly peaceful” considering that the thirty women whom he murdered were likely "only" a small percentage of total women he encountered during his forty-two years of life.

Like Neo watching the other potentials telepathically bend spoons at The Oracle’s home in the Wachowski sisters' (née brothers) mind-bending film, “The Matrix,” America watched reality transmute before her eyes as left-wing media outlets anthropomorphized arson, theft, assault, and murder, as astrophysical manifestations behaving independently from the very real human beings violently acting out in response to the alleged scourge of structural racism. Merely uttering slogans affirming one’s devotion to this miasmatic totem was all that was required by Democrat-dominated media and local governments to absolve the thousands of Americans shirking COVID protocols and routinely engaging in mass protests, crime, and violence in the name of "social justice." BLM euphemistically described this human criminal behavior as “mass disobedience” that was a just and necessary response to alleged violence against “Black and brown bodies” and the bizarre theory that COVID-19 has the sentient ability to disproportionately target said bodies.

Amid these tumultuous months, more evidence has quietly emerged shedding light upon the events leading up to the arrest and ultimate death of George Floyd on the evening of May 25, 2020. Most notably, the complete body camera footage recorded by ex-Minneapolis Police Department officers J. Alexander Keung and Thomas Lane has been released by the judge presiding over the officers’ criminal litigation. Of course, after essentially writing off six months of mass left-wing terror inspired by shoddy and sensational media coverage, the journalism establishment has not revisited the greater body of evidence now available detailing George Floyd's final moments. After the fog of media presumption, selectively edited cell phone video, and press releases from race-peddling plaintiff lawyers has cleared, does the evidence support a narrative that George Floyd’s death was the result of “systemic racism,” or really any racism at all? The answer to this question requires the study and contextualization of the emerging evidence. The left-wing media establishment certainly will not engage in such an onerous task. The full video of the body cam footage that is the subject of the following discussion can be viewed at this link.

The Body Cam Footage

Four Minneapolis police officers were involved in George Floyd’s arrest on the night of May 25, 2020: Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Keung, and Tomas Lane. Officers Keung and Lane were first to arrive at the scene. Both Keung’s and Lane’s body cameras began recording around 8:08 PM while parking their squad car in front of Cup Foods on the Northeast corner of Chicago Avenue and East 38th Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Both officers Keung and Lane entered Cup Foods to speak with the owner, Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, who informed the officers that, according to his employees (who appear from the footage to be two black men), Floyd and one of Floyd’s passengers, Maurice Lester Hall, were shopping, and Floyd attempted to make a purchase with counterfeit twenty-dollar bills. Abumayyaleh and one of his employees directed the officers to the vehicle Floyd was occupying — a blue Mercedes SUV parked across the street.

For context, it is important to highlight the ethnicity of the actors at this point. The owner of Cup Foods and the two employees initially questioned by officers Keung and Lane were people of color. Law enforcement officials ("LEOs") were called after Floyd — a black man — attempted to defraud a minority-operated business with counterfeit currency. The first officers to arrive at the scene included a black man (Keung) and a white man (Lane). As with the vast majority of police interactions in America, this particular interaction was prompted by a 911 call reporting an alleged intra-racial crime. Contrary to the narrative espoused by media and A-list celebrities, LEOs were not wandering the streets in search of a black man to kill in Minneapolis during the evening of May 25, 2020.

After speaking with the Cup Foods staff, officers Keung and Lane made their way across the street to the Southeast corner of Chicago Avenue and East 38th Street where Floyd was parked. Keung approached the passenger side of the vehicle where Maurice Lester Hall, a black man, was sitting with the passenger-side door open. Hall answered all of officers Keung’s questions, promptly complied with all of Keung's commands, and informed Keung that there was a female passenger in the back seat. The encounter between Hall and Keung ended amicably and peacefully. As Officer Keung was speaking with Hall, the dialogue between Officer Lane and George Floyd on the driver's side of the blue Mercedes SUV escalated.

While Keung was approaching the passenger side of the Mercedes SUV, Lane approached the driver’s side where Floyd was sitting. Lane knocked on the window with a flashlight at which time Floyd opened the door and was commanded repeatedly by Lane to show both hands. After Floyd failed to show hands after repeated requests, Lane drew his pistol while demanding that Floyd place his hands on the steering wheel. Floyd reluctantly complied after numerous requests. Officer Lane next commanded, again, repeatedly, that Floyd exit the automobile. Floyd refused to comply stating that “he just lost his mom” (who, in fact, passed away two years prior), and pleaded with Lane not to shoot him. Officer Lane holstered his pistol and repeatedly promised Floyd that he would not be shot. Nonetheless, Floyd remained seated in the automobile, at which point Lane attempted to pull Floyd out by his left arm. While officer Lane began pulling Floyd, the backseat passenger -- Floyd's ex-girlfriend Shawanda Renee Hill -- can be overheard yelling "Stop resisting, Floyd!" Around this time, Officer Keung walked around the vehicle to assist Lane with handcuffing Floyd. Keung can be heard at this time also demanding that Floyd “stop resisting.”

After securing Floyd’s hands behind his body with handcuffs, officer Keung attempted to lead Floyd to the sidewalk. Floyd resisted by planting his feet. Once Keung was able to coax Floyd into walking, Floyd began dropping his body weight like a toddler despite Keung’s numerous commands to stand. Keung was eventually able to pull Floyd up off of the street and informed Floyd that he was trying to get him out of the way of oncoming vehicle traffic. Keung led Floyd to the sidewalk where he was questioned. At that point, a squad car operated by officers Chauvin and Thao arrived, and Keung handed Chauvin a notepad and asked him to run Floyd’s information through their system.

Officer Keung next informed Floyd that he was under arrest and directed Floyd to walk across the street to the squad car in front of Cup Foods. Officer Lane helped with escorting Floyd and asked Floyd if he was "on something.” Floyd answered in the negative at which time Officer Keung remarked that Floyd was behaving erratically and foaming at the mouth. When the party reached the squad car, officers Keung and Lane attempted to position Floyd to face the squad car for a pocket search. Floyd was, again, repeatedly commanded to remain standing as he would drop to the ground while actively resisting the officers’ requests to face the squad car door. A marijuana or crack pipe was extracted from Floyd’s left pocket.

At this time the officers opened the back door of the squad car and instructed Floyd to enter. Floyd was repeatedly commanded to sit in the squad car and actively resisted doing so. During this exchange an elderly black male bystander approached and implored Floyd to “stop resisting!” and “quit resisting!” Nonetheless, Floyd continued to fight entering the squad car despite Lane’s assurances that he would open the windows and turn on air conditioning in response to Floyd’s repeated objections due to his alleged claustrophobia. At this point officer Chauvin can be seen opening the back door on the street side of the squad car in order to pull Floyd in while Lane and Keung push. Floyd began howling at this time and screamed out that he could not breathe claiming that he had COVID-19 and would die if he entered the squad vehicle. The elderly black bystander can, again, be overheard yelling at Floyd to “get in the car!” Eventually Officers Keung and Lane were able to maneuver Floyd into the squad car from the Cup Foods side, shut the door, and immediately run over to the street side to assist Chauvin with preventing Floyd from exiting the vehicle. Floyd nonetheless managed to wrestle his way out of the vehicle despite being handcuffed and against the force of three police officers. While fighting his way out of the squad car Floyd cried out loudly and repeatedly that he had "COVID" and could not breathe. As Floyd kicked his way onto the street, Chauvin pinned Floyd’s upper torso and neck with his knee, while it took the strength of both officers Keung and Lane to secure just one of Floyd’s kicking legs.

Now face down on the asphalt, Floyd continued to yell and scream. Floyd cried out that he was “dead” and requested that his mother (deceased) and kids be informed that he loved them. He continued to loudly voice his alleged inability to breathe and that his face was “gone.” Apparently noting Floyd’s ongoing physical resistance and vocal strength, the officers remarked in response to these pleas that Floyd was “talking fine.” As Floyd’s struggle diminished, Lane asked Chauvin if Floyd should be repositioned on his side, remarking that Floyd may have been exhibiting excited delirium (a medical condition discussed below). Acknowledging Lane’s assessment, Chauvin responded that Floyd should be kept in his current position if he was, in fact, experiencing excited delirium.

Floyd was no longer audibly speaking after a few minutes, but he continued to struggle on the ground, his torso bobbing up and down in breathing rhythm. Officer Lane observed that Floyd appeared to be “passing out." Officers Chauvin and Keung replied voicing their observations that Floyd was still breathing. Floyd’s torso continued to exhibit breathing motions during this time. As the movement of Floyd’s body became increasingly imperceptible, the group of bystanders amassed on the sidewalk in front of Cup Foods became increasingly antagonistic towards the LEOs. Officer Keung examined Floyd’s wrist for a pulse in response to this suggestion by some of the bystanders. Keung stated that he could not find a pulse around 8:26pm, which is approximately the same time Floyd’s body appeared to stop moving. Chauvin continued to apply his knee to Floyd’s upper torso and neck during this time, despite Keung’s observation regarding Floyd’s pulse and officer Lane’s renewed suggestion that Floyd be turned on his side. Undoubtedly CPR should have been administered to Floyd at this time. Chauvin finally removed his knee from Floyd’s neck when EMS arrived approximately two minutes and forty-four seconds after Keung observed no pulse. The LEOs assisted two EMS personnel with placing Floyd on a gurney that was then placed into the back of an ambulance.

Officer Lane split off from the other officers in order to travel with the ambulance. Lane’s body camera recorded his assistance with the administration of CPR in the back of the ambulance. Officer Keung re-entered Cup Foods to gather additional information from the witnesses before once again crossing the street to speak with Floyd’s passengers who were standing next to Mercedes SUV. Keung informed the passengers, Maurice Lester Hall and Shawanda Renee Hill, that Floyd was taken to the hospital. The elderly black bystander who previously implored Floyd to cooperate with LEOs walked over to Floyd’s companions at this time and stated that they should call his family because Floyd “f***ed up.” Hill responded, “they [police] f**k him up?” The witness replied, “No, he [Floyd] f***ed up.”

One overwhelmingly popular narrative spread by the media establishment in the days and weeks following George Floyd’s death was that he was not resisting arrest, but rather, attempting to “defuse the situation.” Searching “Maurice Lester Hall” on Google generates numerous pages of results where virtually every local and national media outlet echoed this narrative apparently taken from a Chris Cuomo interview of Hall on CNN in early June 2020. As is now apparent after reviewing the complete body camera footage, this narrative could not be farther from the truth as Floyd obviously failed to cooperate with LEOs during every step of the encounter. Yet, apparently no media outlet has gone back to re-examine the larger body of evidence now readily available. The billions of dollars in damages to America’s infrastructure and businesses, the lives injured and lost during the riots, and the careers and livelihoods destroyed by the Marxist revolutionary Internet mobs for the past six months are viscera on the media’s hands for irresponsibly and prematurely spreading the fiction that Floyd was cooperating with police at the time of his death — the desired predicate needed by the media to spin a deceptive tale that Floyd’s death was the result of “systemic racism.”

Certainly Floyd’s violent resistance does not excuse LEOs’ failure to administer CPR immediately upon observing that Floyd no longer had a pulse. Whether immediate CPR would have saved Floyd’s life during a possible state of excited delirium would be an exercise in futile speculation until (and if) legal discovery is completed in the ongoing criminal inquiry into the LEOs' conduct. However, the video and audio evidence clearly demonstrate that Floyd was provided numerous opportunities to comply with police before he fought his way out of the squad car against the restraining force of three adult male LEOs.

It is also worth noting that, before Floyd escaped the squad car, officers Keung and Lane were the only two officers directly interacting with Floyd. Other than Lane’s statement of “show me your f***ing” hands!” when Floyd repeatedly failed to do so during the initial encounter, Lane and Keung demonstrated themselves nothing other than polite and accommodating to Floyd’s escalating belligerence throughout the encounter. Keung and Lane explained to Floyd what they were doing and why they were doing it every step of the way. Likewise, Floyd’s passengers - a black man and black woman - who complied with the officers’ commands left the scene untouched and unscathed. No hint of racial animus in the form of racial slurs or overt behavior was exhibited by these LEOs, who believed Floyd to be “on something.”

Toxicology Findings

And the Hennepin County autopsy undoubtedly revealed that Floyd was “on something” at the time of his death. In addition to methamphetamine and marijuana, Floyd had eleven nanograms per milliliter (11ng/mL) of serum level fentanyl according to the autopsy report. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is eighty (80) to one-hundred (100) times more potent than corresponding dosages of morphine. Furthermore, according to the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, toxicity of fentanyl in blood serum can be achieved at only 2 ng/mL. Floyd’s serum level was over five (5) times that which is considered toxic and over fifty-five (55) times that which is considered a strong indicator of recent use according to Mayo Clinic Laboratories. Consistent with the observations of officers Lane and Chauvin while restraining Floyd on the street, Floyd was very likely experiencing excited delirium as a result of his high dose synthetic drug cocktail. Excited Delirium Syndrome (“ExDS”) is recognized by medical science as a deadly health condition.

Excited Delirium Syndrome ("ExDS")

The American Medical Association describes Excited Delirium Syndrome as:

“…a widely accepted entity in forensic pathology and is cited by medical examiners to explain the sudden in-custody deaths of individuals who are combative and in a highly agitated state. Excited delirium is broadly defined as a state of agitation, excitability, paranoia, aggression, and apparent immunity to pain, often associated with stimulant use and certain psychiatric disorders. The signs and symptoms typically ascribed to ‘excited delirium’ include bizarre or violent behavior, hyperactivity, hyperthermia, confusion, great strength, sweating and removal of clothing, and imperviousness to pain. Speculation about triggering factors include sudden and intense activation of the sympathetic nervous system, with hyperthermia, and/or acidosis, which could trigger life-threatening arrhythmias in susceptible individuals.”

These studies suggest that ExDS is often triggered by overdosing upon synthetic controlled substances. According to data compiled by private police policy and procedure consulting firm Lexipol, 89% of struggles involving suspects exhibiting ExDS end with both the police officers and the suspect on the ground with 82% of these encounters posing risk of grievous bodily harm or death. It is understood that the best way to restrain a suspect exhibiting ExDS is to tactically engage the efforts of multiple officers to deploy control holds until sedation can be administered by EMS or medical staff. TASERS and de-escalation techniques tend to be ineffective as suspects exhibiting ExDS typically do not respond to verbal commands, demonstrate enhanced strength, and have a diminished sense of pain. Likewise, the use of a TASER can often trigger cardiac arrest in these often-times highly intoxicated individuals.

A reasonable inference derived from the chatter captured by the body camera footage among Chauvin, Keung, and Lane regarding ExDS, is that Chauvin, the senior officer, believed that the knee hold he was using to maintain restraint over an unpredictable Floyd was necessary until the arrival of EMS personnel. Likewise, the combination of Floyd’s COVID diagnosis along with toxic levels of a synthetic opioid combined with other illicit substances could have triggered ExDS and killed Floyd regardless of Chauvin’s brutal control hold. Noteworthy is the fact that this control hold was a technique taught by the Minneapolis Police Department for handling combative suspects deemed to pose a high risk of harm to self and/or others. Of course, Chauvin’s continued application of this knee hold after Floyd was observed to be non-responsive for roughly two minutes and forty-four seconds certainly seems excessive, and this behavior will be emphasized by prosecutors to infer evidence of Chauvin’s alleged intent to harm Floyd.

Evidence of Systemic Racism?

However, is the mere potentiality for inferred evidence of intent enough to conclude that George Floyd’s death was definitely or even likely the product of endemic American racism? Absolutely not — and especially not as of May and June 2020 when the only information surrounding Floyd’s death came from selectively edited cell phone video and financially motivated race-hustling lawyers. Usually the simplest explanation for human malfeasance is the best explanation, which, based on the body camera footage now available, was likely that none of the officers struggling to restrain a highly combative and non-compliant George Floyd intended to kill him in the struggle.

The lessons from Floyd’s death for any rational human actor who values living are obvious:

1. Do not defraud neighbors. Minneapolis PD would have never been called by a minority owned and operated business had Floyd not attempted to make purchases using counterfeit currency.

2. Refrain from injecting, inhaling, or otherwise imbibing unprescribed controlled substances. According to the 911 transcript, LEOs were called not only because Floyd attempted to defraud a local minority-operated business, but Floyd also presented as visibly impaired when re-entering the driver’s seat of his automobile. Floyd’s apparent intoxication rendered him dangerous to himself and others, and the body camera footage now available presents no clearer picture of the grave risk Floyd posed.

3. Comply with reasonable police commands. Floyd’s passengers — a black male and black female — did this and were not so much as physically touched by the arresting officers.

A Lucrative Grievance Industry

Despite these obvious lessons, the vast cultural and media clout achieved by BLM through capitalizing upon Americans’ increasing indoctrination into critical theory has rendered engaging in meaningful analyses of these fact patterns a dangerous exercise. To study the evidence surrounding George Floyd’s death and conclude that this tragic series of events was anything other than the blight of “systemic racism” subjects writers and speakers to defamatory attacks, bullying, employment termination, and loss of livelihood. The end goal of these soft totalitarian left-wing tactics is to enshrine "systemic racism" - the beating heart of the grievance industry machine -- through intimidating and silencing any and all dissent that might expose the grotesque nature of this machine. After all, the incentive structure in place for anyone who - wittingly or unwittingly - acts to further the structural racism narrative in 2020 Western culture is nothing short of lucrative.

BLM has received pledges totaling hundreds of millions of dollars from newly woke multi-national corporations in the wake of George Floyd’s death even while BLM zealots loot and burn to the ground property belonging to these corporations. George Floyd — whose final living acts involved defrauding a minority owned business and violently resisting arrest, and whose only recorded accomplishments following a promising high school athletic career include drug felonies and aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon against a pregnant Latino woman — received three internationally televised funerals. George Floyd’s siblings are GoFundMe multi-millionaires by virtue of their relation to Floyd. Indeed, the incentive structure in place for sacrificing one's body upon the altar of “systemic racism” in 2020 America is not only lucrative, but perverse.

To state the perfectly obvious, if George Floyd was not black, or if Derek Chauvin was black, or quite possibly if 2020 was not an important election year when left-wing media busy themselves with falsely characterizing conservatives as closet racists, Floyd’s death would not have made it beyond Minneapolis local news. However, the hero worship of George Floyd and the spoils promised those who pledge their fealty to the cult of BLM transformed what were previously considered to be the crimes of theft, robbery, and arson into acceptable and profitable forms of celebration any time that a person with the requisite ethnic bona fides dies during the commission of a crime. Multiple nights of looting in Minneapolis were sparked over the summer by a black man who committed suicide in a mall while fleeing police. Gangs in Chicago went as far as to actively start gun fights with police patrols in order to film and post these conflicts to the Internet with the hope of collecting the GoFundMe cash available to anyone who violently resists arrest, again, provided such persons are adorned in the requisite skin color. Jacob Blake - a black man - became a newly-minted GoFundMe multi-millionaire after ignoring police commands during an arrest prompted by his attempted return to the home of a woman whom he allegedly raped earlier in the summer. With no hint of irony, authors like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo rake in thousands of dollars per hour paid by corporations and academia for facilitating overtly racist workshops and lectures designed to convince certain Americans of the presence of their deeply-held unconscious racism and privilege by dint of nothing other than their evil “white” skin color.

If there was any doubt that the frenzied blitz to promote the existence of the hyperbolic and ne'er-defined concept of "systemic racism" was anything other than a cynical power grab for financial, political, and cultural gain, turn no further than to the left's wholesale rejection of South Carolina Senator Tim Scott's police reform bill over the summer. Republican Senator Tim Scott -- a black man -- drafted legislation that included many of the bipartisan police reforms discussed in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor such as the banning of choke holds and increasing accountability for police departments when using no-knock warrants. Despite the bill containing many of the reforms to which Democrats paid lip service following Floyd's death, the Democratic House majority rejected Scott's proposed legislation outright without so much as considering the bill with Democratic amendments, which Senator Scott stated he would welcome.

Indeed, the cult-like zealotry inspired by Americans’ indoctrination into pseudo-religious variants of Marxist ideology has created a repressive sludge of censorship, violence, and chaos in 2020 America. The very same media outlets that espouse platitudes like “democracy dies in darkness” are the purveyors of darkness when they promote -- as unfalsifiable fact -- misleading narratives and propaganda in the form of incomplete and premature coverage that fuels the censorship of free and open discourse in American society. Americans must wake up to this phenomenon and begin pushing back.

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