George Floyd’s Death

How did George Floyd die?

Well, if you watch mainstream media they want you to choose between his medical condition and the compression on his neck.

If you watch Fox News it’s the former, and if you watch CNN it’s the latter.

How about both?

Our macho culture dictates that it can’t be both.

But what if it is?

If you watch George Floyd while he is in Cup Foods prior to his arrest, he is moving around as if he is as high as a kite.

This is consistent with the methamphetamines that were found in his system.

Fentanyl was found also.

Fentanyl will cause respiratory depression which can contribute to hypoxia and hypercapnia, and ultimately acidosis.

This acidosis then increases the likelihood of an arrhythmia.

Methamphetamine, also in his system, prolongs the QT interval in his heart cells.

The prolongation of the QT interval in the heart permits renegade muscle cells to fire off and cause ventricular tachycardia, a fatal arrhythmia.

This is most likely what killed George Floyd.

George Floyd had 75% narrowing in one coronary artery, and 90% narrowing in another. Essentially, he was a dead man walking. It was only a matter of time.

His heart was enlarged; he had high blood pressure; and he was on drugs.

Now, it is certainly true that hypoxia and acidosis can aggravate that situation.

While the officers knee does not appear to be compressing the carotid artery or the trachea, it is certainly possible that his body weight hampered George Floyd’s breathing to the point where he was suffering a relative hypoxia and elevation of carbon dioxide in this blood. This would obviously contribute to an acidosis which would make George Floyd more prone to suffering an arrhythmia.

How much compression on the chest did George Floyd suffer?

More than he would have suffered had he been sat up against the car.

The question then becomes, would George Floyd have died of an arrhythmia had he been sitting up against the car?

It’s always possible, but the answer is probably not.

Can we then say that Derek Chauvin contributed to the death of George Floyd?

Yes.

Would a prudent officer have acted differently?

Well, there were three other officers on the scene, and none of them stopped Dereck Chauvin.

How about the police chief’s testimony?

Police chiefs are usually political individuals, and this police chief is no different. Indeed, he was quick to fire the other officers the day after George Floyd died. This suggests that this police chief is politically motivated.

He takes his orders from the woke crowd who are now trying to intimidate and influence the legal proceedings with the threat of more rioting.

How about Detective Zimmerman’s testimony? As the defense counsel pointed out, Detective Zimmerman has been out of the loop from day-to-day policing for a long time. I think it’s safe to say that the streets are a little tougher than they were back in the day.

How about the other police officers who are testifying against Derek Chauvin? It’s clear from their testimony that they have been conditioned (through fear of rioting and consequences to the city) to testify against Derek Chauvin. It seems unlikely then to get an honest evaluation from any officer on the Minneapolis police force. One has to wonder if they have been threatened in an unspoken manner with loss of promotion or loss of job if they testify in Derek Chauvin’s behalf.

How about another officer in another locality? Would they have acted in the same manner given the same circumstances?

Probably.

Why probably?

1. Officers can’t predict the future.

2. George Floyd was incredibly strong.

3. The officer’s adrenaline would be juiced up.

Armchair quarterbacks always have all the answers, but as Clausewitz noted in his treatise on war, there’s something about a bullet zinging by your head that gives war a whole new meaning.

Another consideration, given that the left in the United States believes that we are a racist culture, is that the officers would be racist.

Given that, any other officer, white or black, would’ve acted precisely in accordance with how Derick Chauvin reacted.

Of course, this does not make the officer’s actions correct, just in line with how other officers would react and have reacted.

Given all that, it seems clear that Derek Chauvin’s actions were the straw that broke the camel’s back. Since he had no prior knowledge of George Floyd’s medical condition, he can hardly be convicted of murder in any degree. A manslaughter conviction would be similarly shaky if you accept the belief that his actions contributed to his death by no more than 10 to 15%, despite the opinions of doctors who can not support their claims that Derek Chauvin’s actions were the cause of death.

How so, doctor? Do you have a machine that can tell us with definitive authority that what you say is so?

Maybe.

If we view death as a sum of events and stipulate that so many points attributed to those events when cumulatively surpassing a threshold constitutes death then we can develop a model for assigning blame.

Let us stipulate that 95 points out of 100 equals death. Then what is the assignation of points to each factor contributing to George Floyd’s death. Of course our assignation of points is somewhat arbitrary but still based upon reality.

Coronary Artery Disease: 75 points

Drug Use: 15 points

Hostile Crowd: 2 points

Officer: 8 points

Is the assignment of these point values fair?

For sure we know that coronary artery disease and drug use contribute to death significantly, much more so than an officer (approximately 150 pounds with equipment) leaning on the back of the neck and back. In fact, the points given to the officer’s actions may be more than generous, for if leaning on the back of the neck were inherently dangerous the policies never would have been instituted in the first place.

As a matter of fact positional asphyxia represents less than 1% of all police related deaths.

Still a synergistic effect does exist, and so assigning 8 points may indeed be fair.

Of course, all of this is irrelevant.

I would be very surprised if the officer was exonerated of manslaughter.

The jurors do not live in a vacuum, and there is no escaping the fact that they have been subjected to the “certainty” that all hell will break loose if Derek Chauvin goes free.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

Copyright 2021 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved

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