Five years ago today, an arrest incident involving a person named George Floyd grabbed international headlines when the only videos or photos shown were those of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin pinning the arrestee to the ground using a perfectly permissible knee-and-neck hold.
Chauvin was later convicted of murdering Floyd. The coroner, however, concluded that Floyd did not die of asphyxiation. A public and a media committed to the theory of rampant racism as the cause of Floyd’s death to this day still completely overlook the totality of what happened.
The photo above is a scene from a documentary titled “The Fall of Minneapolis,” which shows all the available footage of George Floyd”s arrest. In the scene I highlight (you should watch the entire video to get at the “real” truth), you can hear and see on an overlay caption that Floyd says, “I can’t breathe” even as police officers try to put him in the back seat of their vehicle. There is no chokehold at the time.
The media would have you believe that Floyd only uttered that sentence when he was pinned on the ground because he was so unruly and uncooperative. During the officers’ attempt to arrest Floyd and take him into custody in the back seat of their vehicle, Floyd also said things like “I’m claustrophobic” (meaning he couldn’t sit in the back seat) and “I just had COVID.” The coroner also confirmed that he had the coronavirus in his system.
A bystander watching the arrest urged Floyd to get into the vehicle before he caused himself a “heart attack.”
In addition to fentanyl and methamphetamine found in Floyd’s system, a toxicology report from the autopsy showed that Floyd also had cannabinoids in his system when he died.
Now, one could ask a legitimate question over whether Floyd died because of his vehement resistance to arrest, or because officers, in trying to carry out their duties, misread the situation and should’ve acted differently. In my view, both are legitimate arguments.
What is not a legitimate argument in my view is that Derek Chauvin himself killed George Floyd. President Trump should pardon Chauvin as soon possible, but given the politics of everything, that probably can’t happen until a new president is elected in 2028 and Trump is a lame duck.
Unfortunately, a president cannot pardon for state crimes, so Chauvin would only be pardoned from the federal portion of his conviction. The murder charge would stick.