A few weeks ago I discussed the movie “The fall of Minneapolis”, which you can watch free here. The movie maintains that George Floyd was not murdered by racist cops, but died after he was arrested due to a combination of stress, use of dangerous drugs, and heart and lung problems. Here’s how I summarized the movie at the time:
- Floyd was not murdered by the police: he had serious heart problems, hypertension, artherosclerosis, COVID, and was high on near-lethal doses of fentanyl and methamphetamine during his arrest. He was also complaining about not being able to breathe well before he was brought to the ground by the police. Difficulty in breathing could easily be explained by both his heath condition and ingestion of serious drugs.
- The official autopsy found drugs in Floyd’s system, confirms the health problems mentioned above, and found no evidence from examining his neck that he died from asphyxiation.
- The [police] bodycam videos were not allowed to be shown to jurors by the judge. They show that Floyd might have been restrained simply by having a knee on his shoulder, not on his neck. This method of restraint, called “MRT” (maximal restraint technique) is taught to all Minneapolis police recruits as a way to subdue resisting suspects. (There is no doubt from the bodycam videos that Floyd insistently resisted arrest and fought the officers.)
- The judge did not allow mention or a photo of MRT in the Minneapolis police manual to be shown to the jury. Further, the police captain, lying, denied that MRT was taught to all police officers.
- The police called for medical assistance within minutes of Floyd having a medical emergency when he was on the ground. They also tried to resuscitate him via CPR. This is inconsistent with the narrative that the officers were trying to kill Floyd.
- The judge, mayor, city council and police hierarchy all “conspired” to convict Chauvin and the other officers, buttressing into an official narrative that was likely wrong.
This was followed by a lively discussion among the readers, many of them doubting the evidence given in the movie. I highly recommend that you watch it, as it makes a decent case that not only was Floyd not murdered, but the cops followed official protocol, Floyd was not asphyxiated, and that the mayor and police chief of the city lied under oath in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the accused murderer. As I’ve discussed the evidence before, you can review it here. Meanwhile, click below to watch the movie if you haven’t:
In my earlier post, I showed a 48-minute discussion between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, both of whom watched the movie and were pretty convinced by its thesis. Now, they’re back on the “Glenn Show” (video below) discussing the movie with its two producers, Liz Collin, and JC Chaix. YouTube, however, put restrictions on this one-hour discussion, so Loury decided to put it on his Substack site. If you click on the image below, you can hear that discussion for free. Here’s Loury’s explanation for not putting it on YouTube:
As you may be aware, YouTube restricted this week’s episode of The Glenn Show to viewers 18 and older. My team and I determined that the reason for this restriction was the inclusion of footage and imagery taken from the scene of George Floyd’s death. I want as many people to see this conversation as possible, and an age restriction has the potential to severely limit the video’s reach. So we decided to re-edit the video and remove the footage and imagery that led to the restriction, and then re-upload it. The conversation itself remains intact—only the visual elements have changed.
However, I found it unacceptable to simply capitulate to what I believe to be an incorrect decision on YouTube’s part. Accordingly, I’ve made the version of the video I originally intended to release available here on Substack. This isn’t the first time The Glenn Show has been penalized by YouTube, and I doubt it will be the last. Rest assured that, no matter what happens, I’ll find a way to get my show—uncompromised and unfiltered—out to you.
Click to watch:
At the beginning and throughout, McWhorter plays the role of “bad cop,” even though he buys the film’s premise. He does this by asking the hard questions that have led people to diss the movie. For example:
Was the bodycam showing Chauvin sitting on Floyd’s shoulder rather than his neck produced by AI? The producers say definitely not: AI manipulation arrived long after the bodycam videos were made public.
Why did Chauvin sit on Floyd’s neck for so long when Floyd clearly said he was in trouble? In fact, the cops called for medical help within a minute, but the emergency help bot confused with directions and took longer to arrive.
Did Chauvin, even if he didn’t intend to murder Floyd, or killed him unintentionally, contribute to Floyd’s death by sitting on his neck or shoulders? That’s doubtful; Chauvin was unaware of Floyd’s medical condition at the time of the arrest (an arrest that Floyd fought vehemently). Also, Floyd was crying “I can’t choke! I can’t breathe!” before he was ever on the ground—indeed, before the cops ever touched him. Further, the official autopsy said there were “no signs of asphyxiation.”
Did the cops violate department policy by restraining Floyd the way they did? No, in fact they were strictly adhering to the department policy of “maximum restraint technique” (MRT), which all Minneapolis cops are taught. The mayor and chief of police lied about this, denying that it was taught, and then someone removed the MRT pages from the online police manual.
Why did the prosecution witnesses lie, and why did they show only 90 seconds of the 18-20 minutes of police bodycam video (that video’s in the movie)? It’s not completely clear, but the producers suggest there was a narrative that had to be adhered to and that narrative was of a white cop, motivated by racism, murdering a black man. In fact, the coroner admitted there was such a narrative and was scared that he’d be fired because his autopsy report didn’t adhere to that narrative.
Why didn’t the movie show all nine minutes of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s back/neck? The explanation is a bit unclear, but apparently the producers wanted the viewers to get hold of the whole nine minutes and judge for themselves. But where would we get that video? This is the only waffle-y part of the producers’ explanation.
The discussion ends with a bit about the interviews with the Minneapolis police officers who weren’t arrested, and who are sometimes moved to tears by what happened to their department and by the lies of the prosecution witnesses and other officials. There’s also some discussion about the $27 million that Minneapolis gave to Floyd’s family. Apparently another person arrested and subject to the MRT also sued, though he wasn’t injured, and got $8-9 million.
If you’re not in the mood to watch Loury and McWhorter yet, at least watch the original movie. But I recommend watching the original movie and the Substack discussion above.
The rational case (based on facts and evidence) against the argument of Floyd’s having been killed by so-called “racist cops” had already been made, by many, in the months following the event, yet none of this had any influence on either public perceptions of his death or the cultural and ideological manipulation of the dominant narrative surrounding it, nor will either the new film or the well-reasoned discussions of Loury and McWhorter have any effect, in all likelihood, on what has already been deemed to be the “true story”.
Quite. The depressing thing about this is not only is the conviction very probably unsound given the unheard and unseen evidence, nor that the cops are innocent of murder, but that no matter what we find out now there is no way that anyone would dream of doing anything at all about it. When you weight the lives of five cops against the social unrest, riots, further deaths, and resentment that would follow a reversal of that verdict, you see that there is no hope of truth being allowed to win here. Everyone would seem to prefer those cops getting quietly and fatally shanked in prison so as to let us get on with the narrative that America is doing something positive about racism.
The level of fentanyl recorded at autopsy was actually well above the lethal dose for a normal person. A drug user can habituate to the drug, and so tolerate a higher level, though the extent to which Floyd was habituated is unknown.
The Current Thing Did Not Take Place (derived from Baudrillard)
“And so the dialectic progresses”
–Critical Race Theory – An Introduction
Delgado and Stefancic, 2017 (emphasis added)
What do you mean by repeating these statements.. in your own words?
Jean Baudrillard
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
1995 (English)
James Lindsay expands upon that idea in a podcast The Current Thing Did Not Take Place. It’s actually a New Discourses T-shirt too.
The dialectic quote is a quote from a book everyone needs to read.
Together they illustrate the dialectical political warfare relevant to the present topic.
I’m not sure what “your own words” was supposed to mean.
But I just learned about the Baudrillard that “The title is a reference to the play The Trojan War Will Not Take Place by Jean Giraudoux” (Wikipedia) Huh!
BTW I don’t leave links because they hang the comments up.
Thanks, Thyroid. I wanted to understand your opinion/comment but wasn’t familiar with your references. I figured it was some kind of inside joke I’d missed. I appreciate the explication. Hope I didn’t sound rude. I get you now.
Cool, Cheers
TP works a bit like a preacher, citing the Holy Writ, calling upon the saints Marcuse and Foucault, dropping phrases and allusions to stories once well-known among the postmodern faithful. But foundational knowledge of the faith is growing weaker even as its power spreads in Postmoderndom. And since many of the faithful are unaware of their foundations in the French and German Fathers, TP also draws upon these older—and often richer—sources of thought, theory, praxis, and inspiration. If TP were a preacher, the faithful would call this edifying. But TP would not be welcome in their pulpits, would not be allowed to sing in the choirs of our once-again sectarian temples of higher learning.
TP: It’s a long march. Are you mocking the band?
Errrmm…
Let’s get back to the topic, shall we?
I watched the movie, Loury & McWhorter’s discussion of it, L & M’s interview with the producers and a lot of the original trial.
I remember, or think I remember, this about the trial. At some point there was evidence at the trial that Chauvin was following Minneapolis police restraint policy. There was discussion in court of the original autopsy not indicating that Floyd died by asphyxiation. There was a lot of analysis in court of the police bodycam videos, especially the 8 or so minutes when the officers were manhandling Floyd near the police car: I should be very surprised if we only saw 90 seconds of that section.
I seem to remember thinking that Chauvin would be found guilty of the least serious charge (some form of manslaughter, was it?). What did I know?
The best prosecution argument was the one about Floyd stopping moving: at, say, 5 minutes in, why didn’t Chauvin (et al) change what they were doing? They could have used their initiative to address Floyd’s long lack of movement. That argument might have given me as a juror cause to judge Chauvin in a harsher way.
The producers may be right that some evidence did not get in to court, but I have a memory of more getting in than they say. When they draw attention to the politicians’ comments after the incident and during the trial, those interventions are bad, they are really bad.
I’d just point out a couple of things related to the movie’s presentation of the body-cam video which I noticed on re-watching. The medical issues have been ably discussed by others. I would just concur that fentanyl, morphine, methamphetamine, and cocaine are a lethal combination for a man who is too old to be resisting the efforts of four police officers to arrest him.
The long opening segment of video ends at 17′ 40″ into the movie, at 20:20:09 (time stamp on cam), at which time Mr. Floyd is still very much alive, talking and resisting. We don’t see any more of the time-line until 41′ 07″ when, beginning at 20:29:27, the cam video shows 10 seconds of Mr. Floyd being loaded into the ambulance — then-Officer Chauvin appears briefly in the left of the frame –, then a jump edit to 20:36:32 showing 2 seconds plus freeze-framing of the oxygen tubing being not (yet?) deployed for connection to the supply cock in the ambulance. We see this sequence again at 58′ 33″ but this time it runs longer and shows then-Officer Lane beginning CPR at 20:30:45. This clip ends 7 seconds later. This sequence does not show the business with the oxygen tubing (which occurred six minutes later even though the jump edit makes this not obvious.) While this clip does show Mr. Lane’s attempt to save Mr. Floyd’s life (rather than kill him), we have no way to tell if this intervention was timely, given the 9+ minute gap in the time-line: we don’t know when Mr. Floyd lost his pulse, the only reason for doing CPR.
There is a brief clip of body-cam video from then-Officer Thao at 20:32:47 that doesn’t add anything except show that the fire department had difficulty finding the scene, which the ambulance was already present at.
The movie leaves out whatever body-cam video there might have been between 20:20:09 and 20:29:27. The filmmakers say they left out the “viral video” that covers this period (when Mr. Floyd went from struggling to pulseless) because “everyone has seen it” and they wanted to offer a different point of view. OK, but it would have been useful to include the body-cam video covering that period if the goal was for viewers to make up their own mind about what happened during that 9 minutes and 18 seconds.
I think the splitting of the body-cam footage into two main segments shown 23 minutes 27 seconds apart, split by the reprehensible conduct of so many officials and ordinary Minneapolitans, is a documentary device to make the viewers forget those 9+ minutes. If they had run the cam video from start to finish with an obvious 9+ minute gap in it, viewers would have cried foul.
This omission is particularly important because the jurors told Don Lemon of CNN that they were divided about whether then-Officer Chauvin’s actions during the arrest had been unlawfully excessive or that they unlawfully contributed to his death from other causes (drugs in a man too old for this shit.) Searching around for a reason to convict (which they knew they “had to”) and which they could unanimously square with their consciences, they hit on the “lightbulb moment” to convict based on his actions that occurred in the 9+ minutes not presented in the movie. The film-makers would have known about this interview. If they were really trying to show us the jury got it wrong, they needed to have put before us the events that the jurors said they convicted on.
I agree that the decision not to show the full 9 mins 29 secs from the point of view of one or more of the body cams was an error, not least because the omission exposes the documentary to obvious criticism from sceptics who don’t want to engage with its message. The argument that it wasn’t included because the footage captured by bystanders is well known to viewers is disingenuous, since one of the arguments the film makes is that we have been misled by what we have seen of the incident shown by the mainstream media, which relied on the witnesses’ iphone videos.
That all said, it seems that those involved with the investigation and trials were very economical with the truth.
I agree that it is better to be unambiguously transparent, even if it moderates the tone of the piece a little.
Last night, I was watching a BBC presentation about the Columbia disaster and noticed that they showed some events out of order. No doubt this was done for dramatic effect, but it was supposed to be a documentary.
It seems inaccurate to say that the jury got it wrong in this case. They did what they could with the limited information that they were allowed to see and consider. Of course, the knowledge that their rendering anything less than “guilty” would result in their being doxxed, fired from their jobs, and have their family members stalked and possibly attacked was possibly a larger factor than any evidence in the case.
The jury, just like the cops involved, were put in an untenable situation, where no positive outcome was likely.
If the theory doesn’t fit the facts, so much the worse for the facts. 😉
I watched the film and agree with its hypotheses based on its evidence (which was visually compelling) but I was still a bit shocked that a police officer hearing a person complaining of not being able to breathe would have been as harsh, putting a medically compromised person through that much stress. Yes, not murder, not motivated, not racist, agree, but still not how I would have hoped a cop to respond to a medical emergency (yes, in time they called an ambulance and even it says above attempted CPR, which I didn’t remember from the film, but which is in their favor). A few times I used to train police, EMS, and fire personnel when I worked in Gary, IN, at a mental health center on how to work with people with intellectual disability, autism, and mental illness (say, psychotic) for a special certificate they could get in IN that would allow them to be called more frequently for that population, as sometimes they would show poor judgment with that population, leading to unfortunate outcomes. I think the Floyd case still brings to mind such challenges in decision making, and while race may not be a critical variable, working in a high crime environment could be one.
I have watched several other recent police procedural YouTubes where the person being restrained complains that he (it is normally a male) cannot breathe. In the videos I watched it seemed obvious that the person being detained was angling for less restraint so that he could escape.
One of the unintended consequences perhaps?
I have often wondered how someone who “can’t breathe”, can speak. I suffer from laryngospasm, which on rare occassions causes my larynx to close up, fortunately for usually no more than a (terrifying) minute or so, making it impossible for me to breathe. Believe me, I cannot speak during that minute, I just make a horrible squeaking gasping sound, which I know terrifies those around me.
From what I’ve gathered, choking is ascertained when the person choking cannot make sounds with their voice. They sort of gesticulate soundlessly. That means if they are coughing or yelling out, they should NOT get choking first aid because it could cause more harm to an unharmed person.
But of course, we should review the proper modern choking first aid guidance from a good medical source.
After watching the documentary I rewatched the 9 minute video of George Floyd being pinned on the ground by Derek Chauvin and the other officers.
It was actually more disturbing than I remembered.
So I would also recommend watching the documentary in conjuction with the bystander video of Floyd’s final minutes.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch that video, important as it is to fill in the 9+ minutes. My wife has. She tells me it shows Mr. Floyd appearing to die but it doesn’t show what happened after he stopped resisting. (She may have seen a shorter version than you have.)
I submit this is an important distinction. The jurors told Don Lemon of CNN that they were not unanimous (I think it was 5 opposed) that Mr. Chauvin acted murderously during the time he and the other officers were pinning him, i.e., his cardiac arrest on the video, disturbing as I’m sure it is, was not murder to that point. It was Mr. Chauvin’s failure to try to resuscitate Mr. Floyd, or that he interfered with attempts by others to resuscitate him, that they seized upon in their “lightbulb moment”, a way to bring in the murder conviction that they knew, going in, that they “had to” do.
The jurors didn’t say that these actions convinced them that Mr. Chauvin had intended the death all along (although of course they might have done), just that his lack of concern for the welfare of the now no-longer resisting Mr. Floyd in itself constituted the murder they needed. In the interview they don’t refer to the judge’s charge to them as to what law they were bound to consider in this “lightbulb” inspiration. It was just a “feeling” they had.
So my question to you is, Do you see in the bystander video evidence that satisfies you beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Chauvin committed murder after Mr. Floyd appears to have suffered cardiac arrest, as the jury decided he had? I’m not pressing you for an answer. Just something to think about. Did Justice peak under her blindfold on this one?
If it is true that they “knew” they had to arrive at a murder conviction, to my mind, this is grounds for overturning the verdict and at least having a retrial.
In such cases, you should begin with the obvious. A glance at the Wikipedia page is already quite illuminating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_George_Floyd#Further_reading
It reads, ‘Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face-down in a street.’ It is a fact or Wikipedia lies. And you see a picture that leaves little up to the imagination. It is dangerous to take partisan materials at face value. It is clear the police officer didn’t intend to kill Floyd and that Floyd was a troublemaker.
So I don’t think Floyd was murdered (as that implies intent). Floyd’s health and drug use could have contributed to his death. And then it got political because BLM wanted the officer’s scalp. To appease the mob, the sentence may been harsh.
But something is not right about how US police handle people. You only have to compare the deaths at the hands of the police in the UK with the US. The US police are 100 times as lethal (death per 100,000 citizens). It is a mind-boggling statistic. And no one talks about that while it is so obvious.
What the statistics also indicate, is that, if you consider the crime statistics, US police do not excessively target blacks. Blacks commit more violent crimes. So the US has a problem with police violence rather than police violence against blacks, and that hurts blacks more because they commit more crimes.
There is a lot of crap on Substack that you can barely call journalism. People can doctor a YouTube movie proving no plane ever hit the WTC on 9/11 by leaving out relevant material. But today, politically correct journalism is of poor quality too. And we like scandal, so we can be angry at some evil. That applies to both BLM and MAGA. It is a free market. Paying subscribers get what they want, but it is not necessarily the truth or a balanced view.
Reading through the comments I think some may be confused about the murder charges at issue. MN statutes have categories of murder that do not require the intent to kill, i.e. it is not necessary to prove intent to kill. Chauvin was charged with 2nd Degree Unintentional Murder and 3rd Degree Murder.
3rd degree murder is pretty much the same. Intent to murder is not required for either charge.
I don’t see how either of those clauses would apply to Chauvin. Was he attempting to commit a felony offence? Was he restrained under an order for protection?
I’m pretty sure that the prosecution’s intent was to show that Chauvin was committing a felony offense that resulted in Floyd’s death. My guess is some sort of assault.
Shortly after the incident, and based on videos then available to the public, murder 2 unintentional looked plausible to me. At this point, after the trial and much more information available, I have reasonable doubts.
This movie covers some of the reasons why I think there is reasonable doubt, but the movie itself actually leaves me with the feeling that the movie makers are spinning things. To what degree I couldn’t say. However they did clearly, IMO, engage in some deception. This seems particularly stupid to me because I don’t think they needed to. At least not in order to show that there is reasonable doubt to suppose the trial was biased and lies were told.
Thanks, Jerry, for bringing our attention to the film. Despite its overtly pro-cop perspective, it was highly enlightening. I’m especially struck, as are Loury and McWhorter, by the blatant lying on the stand by the police chief. So, in May 2021, when the Militant newspaper ran the following piece critical of the Chauvin trial, it was so far from what all other “left” sources were saying, it was a little hard to accept. But time has vindicated them: https://themilitant.com/2021/05/08/chauvin-trial-was-a-blow-to-rights-workers-fought-for-and-need-today/