George Floyd - America so f**ked up

Been to quite a few US states. In NY on the long Island expressway, bridges were built low to the road to prevent black people traveling to NYC on buses. We had a NY cop do his traffic control dance for us, then we saw a different cop staring at a black family in Macy's 10 minutes later.

In the southern states like Virginia & Tennessee it's rare to see a US flag (which is very odd compared to northern states) but you see loads of big trucks with Confederate flag bumper stickers.

United States of white supremacy.

Yeah there are decent people there, those were just two examples that shocked me.

With the current culture war that seems to be playing out there is a genuine feeling of things going backwards.

Seems a bit more information is coming out. Had a knife in the driver side of the car - presume this is what he was going to his car for after grappling on the floor with two police officers? Also police were called because he was at the girlfriends house when he shouldn’t have been, presumably because of the previous domestic violence incident?

It’s not quite the completely random, innocent victim of police racism and brutality that the media and Governor first shouted from the rooftops igniting riots.

The misleading original reports sold papers, caused riots, which in turn sells more papers. 

Probably didn’t merit being shot 7 times but if he didn’t resist the police and try to get into his car where he kept his knife then it would never have reached that point. My point stands that the subsequent events all resulted from the reckless and irresponsible reporting from the media and politicians.

On your wider point I agree that the American gun culture is a complete joke but seems beyond repair whichever party is in control.

With respect the Afro American community have to take some of the blame for what is happening right now. After watching the video a few times I agree with William Wilson. In an era where it is taboo to appropriate someone else’s experience and claim it as our own it is not really surprising that everyone seems able to appropriate the experience of a cop with a live weapon and a suspect who won’t obey orders as he reaches into his vehicle for God knows what and judge them from the safety of their armchairs. It’s easy to say “he should have waited to see what the suspect did” but that scenario must be one of the toughest the human mind can endure and rational decision making Is beset by the panic that you could lose your life in a few seconds. All the training in the world won’t prepare you for when it happens for real with live bullets and an unpredictable target.

There is no empathy for that tortured decision making from the protesters though, they don’t care about any other detail apart from white cop, black victim, the rest is just noise and now the town is going to burn and more people are going to die just because the guy would not obey orders and reached into his car. That was the spark in the whole tinder box.

Sounds like in this incident the lady called 911 to report Blake was at her property when he wasn’t supposed to be following a previous  domestic violence incident. I would hazard a guess the police computer then tells them of a previous incident where he drunkenly brandished a handgun in a bar and then assaulted a police officer, it may (according to another report I read) refer to an outstanding arrest warrant. They will therefore have been very wary. Blake has resisted arrest, broke free after grappling on the floor with two officers, managed to avoid a taser and went for his car. The cop has been trying to pull him back by his shirt but he still gets to the car so the cop shoots - was 1 or 7 shots necessary I don’t know. Turns out he had a knife inside the drivers door so if the cop didn’t shoot there is surely a good chance he will have been stabbed.

A tough choice for the cop, shoot and face jury by media or stand there and be stabbed. Could the whole situation have been avoided? Yes - the police could just ignore emergency calls when there is a BAME perpetrator because you just can’t win. Alternatively, and this is a bit left field Blake could have just done what he was told. 

What is interesting for me is that he walked, he didn’t panic. He calmly and methodically went about his business whilst the officers told him to stop. Zero f**ks given from Blake, ambled over the driver’s side door and reached in. Absolutely totally needless.

I’m sorry but I just don’t buy that. If he had just done as he was told what is the worst that would have happened? He was the one in the wrong. All this media hype about black people being treated differently by the police is doing nothing but stirring more and more cases of people resisting arrest which leads to more and more bad outcomes. The same is happening in the U.K. but with the police being unarmed the outcome isn’t so deadly, regardless of the circumstances nobody thinks they have to obey a direct instruction from a police officer these days. Constant excuses being put forward for people disobeying the law is helping nobody