The Trial of Derek Chauvin In The Death of George Floyd Begins

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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97 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    Hoo, boy. This is going to be nuts.

    There was an independent autopsy back in June that said it was a homicide after the dependent autopsy a few days earlier said that there were “potential intoxicants” in his system.

    Since then… what do we know? You’ve heard the George Floyd had Fenatyl in his system, right? Where did that information come from? Is it accurate? How in the hell are we supposed to know things?

    So I am wondering what will come out in the trial. Will they lean on the dependent autopsy or the independent one? Will the word “Fenatyl” be uttered?Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    I wonder how many of those jurors have already decided that they will never vote to convict a cop?Report

    • InMD in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Theoretically that should come out in voir dire. The practical reality is I think there are a lot of people who can honestly say they could vote to convict a cop, even though they won’t and never would under circumstances like these.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to InMD says:

        When I was a juror in a DUI case, there was a potential juror who’d had the daughter of a close personal friend of hers maimed in a DUI.

        She clearly had 3 nails and a hammer in her purse. If I could see then then everyone could, except for her.

        She couldn’t admit to herself there was no way she could be impartial and eventually the defense bounced her without cause.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      Perhaps relevant:

      Last June, 60% in a USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll described Floyd’s death as murder; that percentage has now dropped by double digits to 36%. Uncertainty has grown about how to characterize the incident, caught on video, when Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck and ignored his protests that he couldn’t breathe. Last year, 4% said they didn’t know how to describe it; that number has climbed to 17%.

      All that to say: They don’t even have to have decided to never vote to convict a cop.

      They just have to look at the evidence before them as dispassionate and sober jurors and reach a conclusion in concordance with the judge’s direction.Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

        and ignored his protests that he couldn’t breathe.

        Defense will point out he started claiming he couldn’t breathe long before he was on the ground.

        I think it’s possible to find 12 to convict, he was on the guy’s neck a long time, but with the whole resisting arrest while repeatedly claiming he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be shocked if they don’t.Report

  3. Rufus F. says:

    At this point, in this endlessly repeated drama, I have certain very cynical expectations- we’re going to learn a lot about every mistake George Floyd made in his life prior to this; Derek Chauvin will wind up a free man and Fox News contributor; any number of people will say “If Floyd had only done this, he’d be alive today!” There will be riots. More people will end up dead or ruined. And, then, in a few months, another cell phone video will start the cycle over again.

    I’d love to be proven wrong, but cases like this wind up being referendums on the system, and one of the hardest parts about fixing the system is people have an innate refusal to hear that the system isn’t working.

    Things have changed too. I remember a time in which I watched the Rodney King videotape in horror that something like that could happen in a modern society; now, my first thought is I can’t believe they didn’t shoot and kill him once they pulled him out of the car.Report

    • The morning started out with the state asking for a delay to jury selection to re-admit the 3rd degree murder charge, which the judge denied. That publicity stunt of bumping the initial charges to 2nd degree murder sure feels like the moment that doomed this prosecution. There is still apparently a chance they get the lesser charges in on jury instructions but it was such a bad look for what is going to be a complicated explainer of a prosecution. I’m with you, I hope I’m proven wrong, but unless they get get a lesser charge Chauvin is probably going to get off here. And God help the streets if he does.Report

      • InMD in reply to Andrew Donaldson says:

        I can never decide if prosecutors are intentionally throwing these cases by over-charging, bowing to public pressure, or if they are just so used to overcharging as a matter of practice that they fail to see that these cases will be different.

        Now I’m not saying we’d see wildly different outcomes if a little more restraint was used in charging. It’s impossible to game out that kind of counter-factual with any certainly. But every time I see a 1st or 2nd degree murder charge when a negligent homicide crime is a better fit for the (reported) facts I can’t help but think the state has handicapped itself.Report

        • Slade the Leveller in reply to InMD says:

          Throwing.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to InMD says:

          I think it’s a combination of over-charging and lackluster prosecution.Report

        • Dark Matter in reply to InMD says:

          Isn’t 3rd degree in that state when you don’t target anyone specifically? Like if you shoot into a crowd not knowing/caring who is there?

          RE: the state has handicapped itself.

          The senior prosecutors realize how nasty the case will be so they avoid the case. Ergo it gets assigned to some junior.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

            Has that been confirmed? Like, have they given the job to somebody in their first few years of being an ADA or something?Report

            • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

              Very much not confirmed, it’s purely me speculating… and remembering what happened with OJ.

              Having said that, if you were the brilliant, connected, ADA in the office, wouldn’t you do everything you could to make sure you weren’t handling it?Report

      • Koz in reply to Andrew Donaldson says:

        That publicity stunt of bumping the initial charges to 2nd degree murder sure feels like the moment that doomed this prosecution.

        I thought so too at one point but not so much any more. It seems pretty clear to me now that Derek Chauvin had little or nothing to do with the death of George Floyd, and I suspect he’ll walk on all the death related charges.

        He is, at least for me, plainly guilty of assault, aggravated assault, or the like.Report

  4. Chip Daniels says:

    What strikes me about this case, and others like Sandra Bland, Philando Castile and Eric Garner is how trivial the underlying crime was. Traffic stops, selling loosies even passing a counterfeit bill are the sort of offenses which rarely if ever require a violent response. And in fact, almost never do for people who are higher up in the social hierarchy.

    So my conclusion is that the underlying police response is largely pretextual, an excuse to exert power and control so as to maintain the social hierarchy.Report

    • Slade the Leveller in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Exactly. I committed the same crime as George Floyd and got a ride home from the store from the cops.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      We are overlegislated out the wazoo. Cops should not be interested in de minimus crimes. On top of that, de minimus needs to be a *LOT* broader.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

        De minimus crimes like shoplifting? Trespassing? Counterfeiting?Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          “Making my property values go down?”

          Edit: I’d also like to point out that you were the one who brought up “Sandra Bland, Philando Castile and Eric Garner”. If you were going to jump to any conclusions, perhaps you could have wandered through their offenses against The State before leaping to how the cops really should have been brought in for George Floyd… but they shouldn’t have *KILLED* him.Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

            Bland and Castile were stopped for simple traffic violations.

            The key here is “pretextual”;

            Cops aren’t going around beating and shooting every person who commits traffic violations but only certain people who are violating the social hierarchy.

            So focusing on the pretextual crime isn’t addressing what’s going on. If they can’t arrest someone for this de minimus crime, they will find another.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              So how does one deal with pretext, or as it is officially known, “probable cause”?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                How does one deal with embedded racism?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Maybe don’t give the racists an opportunity to exercise it through to power of the state, by, oh, I don’t know, allowing police to inject themselves into whatever situation they deem?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Again, if we accept the presence of racist enforcers of the law, how will we expect laws like shoplifting and trespass to be enforced?

                Or do we revoke those laws as well?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Do you remember why you brought up Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner?

                Hell, do you remember *THAT* you brought up Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                You get back to me when you figure out how to prevent racists from entering, or remaining in, law enforcement.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                At least we can identify the correct problem.

                Because I don’t see any path to a just society that runs through:

                1. Accept that large numbers of all institutions consider nonwhite people as unequal and unworthy of full rights;
                2. ???
                3. Justice!Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Maybe we can take a shortcut through “Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner shouldn’t have been bugged by the police in the first place”?Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

                Which “crime” are we claiming shouldn’t be crimalized here, counterfeiting or driving while high?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Was the $20 bill actually counterfeit?

                You’d think that this would be an easy question to answer.

                But I’m not finding the answer anywhere.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

                Was the $20 bill actually counterfeit?

                If you’re trying to make the argument that fewer laws would result in fewer interactions with the police, then you shouldn’t care.

                Now my argument is after the police talked to him, they also didn’t care because his lack of ability to have a conversation was so strongly suggestive of driving while high that they couldn’t let him go on his way.

                So we shouldn’t care about the counterfeiting unless we’re first sure we don’t want to care about impaired driving.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                It’s more a case of, why were 4 officers needed to handle a fake bill? Why were police dispatched at all? It’s a fake $20, it’s not going anywhere, have someone swing by and secure it as evidence for transfer to the Secret Service later.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                It’s more a case of, why were 4 officers needed to handle a fake bill?

                It was only two officers until Floyd resisted arrest and they needed to get physical. 2nd problem is “fake $20” was only part of it even from the init report.

                A store employee called the police to report that Floyd had passed “fake bills”, was “awfully drunk”, and “not in control of himself”. (wiki)

                He was also behind the wheel of a car.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

                In this case, I’m kind of shocked that the $20 seems to have vanished.

                That’s weird, right?

                Shouldn’t that $20 still be around somewhere?Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

                Shouldn’t that $20 still be around somewhere?

                There are pictures of it on the internet. They look pretty fake to my eye but it’s hardly my field.

                I assume it was actually real or it would have been leaked but it will probably be handled at the trial… and imho it doesn’t really matter.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

                From the story I linked:

                The alleged counterfeit $20 bill used by George Floyd wasn’t inspected or collected before his fatal arrest in Minneapolis, according to one of the first officers at the scene.

                Former police officer Thomas Lane said in newly-released audio that he didn’t obtain the bill before, during or after the incident that led to Mr Floyd’s death on 25 May.

                In response to questioning by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Mr Lane said that he didn’t look at the alleged $20 forgery being held by the Cup Foods worker identifying Mr Floyd.

                Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

                Well then after they killed him they didn’t collect the bill and it’s been lost. Presumably they just stopped caring about it.

                I’m not sure if this is incompetent or not considering even if it’d been counterfeit that wouldn’t have come close to justifying his death.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

                It’d be a hell of thing if it weren’t. Like it was one of the $20s we used to have in the 80’s, back when music was good.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                You are proposing to revoke traffic laws?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                We’ve already established as a matter of law that police merely need to review photographic and/or video evidence of a traffic violation, and have no actual need to conduct a stop to issue a citation. It would be trivial to take dash cam footage and issue citations based upon that without an officer ever having to conduct a stop.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Is your argument that the cops were “just doing their jobs” when Sandra Bland got pulled over? Just following the book?

                Here’s from the Sandra Bland wikipedia page, for the record:

                Encinia had a history of performing pretextual traffic stops, having issued 1,600 mostly minor tickets in less than 12 months, using the pretext of little-enforced minor infractions to then perform random searches in the hope of finding something criminal. He began following Bland in Prairie View, Texas on the afternoon of July 10, 2015, accelerating fast on her rear, closing in so near to her that she changed lanes to give him the right of way, believing he was headed to an emergency call – at which point he pulled her over on University Drive for failure to signal a lane change, though he could have still stopped her if she did signal, under a different section of the Texas Transportation Code requiring a continuous lane change signal for a minimum of 100 feet (30 m). In a series of events recorded by his dashcam, along with a bystander and Bland herself, Encinia spoke to Bland, the interaction became heated, and he pulled her from her car. After they moved out of frame, he forced her on the ground, and arrested her.

                Were the police following protocol with Philando Castile?

                Here’s from the Philando Castile wiki page, for the record:

                A St. Anthony police officer patrolling Larpenteur Avenue radioed to a nearby squad that he planned to pull over the car and check the IDs of the driver and passenger, saying, “The two occupants just look like people that were involved in a robbery. The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just because of the wide-set nose. I couldn’t get a good look at the passenger.”

                Oh, and Eric Garner! Was that interaction with the police by the book?

                Here’s from the Eric Garner wiki page:

                On July 17, 2014, at approximately 3:30 p.m., Garner was approached by a plainclothes police officer, Justin D’Amico, in front of a beauty supply store at 202 Bay Street in Tompkinsville, Staten Island. According to bystanders (including a friend of Garner, Ramsey Orta, who recorded the incident on his cell phone) Garner had just broken up a fight, which may have drawn the attention of the police. Officers confronted Garner and accused him of selling “loosies” (single cigarettes without a tax stamp) in violation of New York state law.[40][41] Garner is heard on the video saying the following:

                Get away [garbled] for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. Why would you…? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn’t do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me [garbled] selling cigarettes. I’m minding my business, officer, I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone.

                When Pantaleo approached Garner from behind and attempted to handcuff him, Garner pulled his arms away, saying, “Don’t touch me, please.”

                And… what’s your question?

                “You are proposing to revoke traffic laws?”

                Let me just point out that the problem with every single case above has SFA to do with “traffic laws”.

                I know why I would bring up Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner in a discussion of the police ignoring de minimis crap.

                What I’m boggling at now is why in the heck you brought them up if what you wanted to do was defend law and order?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                You’ve gotten yourself to the point where you are just repeating my arguments, as if you disagree.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Chip, your argument seems to be that giving the police fewer reasons to bug non-criminals who aren’t doing anything wrong will not result in fewer interactions like the ones in the examples that you gave.

                And I disagree.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

                Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner in a discussion of the police ignoring de minimis crap.

                Bland was a case of a serial power abusing cop.

                With Castile race played a role and the cop flipped out.

                Garner probably hits the radar as the police enforcing trivial laws but I’m not sure it should. Garner was a professional low level criminal and if selling loosies isn’t illegal then he’d find something else illegal to do.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter says:

                The argument seems to be, and correct me if I’m wrong, we *HAVE* to allow the cops to do pretextual stuff because the alternative is moving the line for where they are allowed to have interactions with the public and that is unacceptable because it means stuff like changing traffic laws.

                Is that a strawman?Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

                My argument is we have a for-real criminal class/sub-culture and we’re going to get unequal results because of that.

                Bland and Castile are preventable by police reform, Garner probably isn’t.

                I’m not opposed to traffic changes, although we’ve seen that replacing cops with robots instantly changes into 100% enforcement for the purpose of raising revenue so it’s not entirely a no-brainer.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Garner was professional street hustler vs power abusing cop.

                The question with someone like Garner is this: Yes, he was breaking the law, and if that law wasn’t there, he would probably break some other law. But would he be causing any actual harm through his lawlessness?

                The world is full of harmless criminals.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                But would he be causing any actual harm through his lawlessness?

                Garner had been arrested by the NYPD more than 30 times since 1980 on charges such as assault, resisting arrest, and grand larceny. (quote from wiki)Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                And his convictions for any of that were…?

                Never trust arrests, the police can arrest you for whatever the hell they want. That doesn’t mean that the charge has any relation to reality. We have a nasty cultural habit of assuming that the police wouldn’t arrest and charge a person for X if there wasn’t some truth to X, and perhaps in most cases, that holds. But the police bear no cost for arresting a person on the thinnest of pretense. If the cops have decided they don’t like you, and you don’t have the ability to apply political pressure to them, or cause them legal heartburn, then they bear no cost for messing with you at will.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                There is a disconnect between “Garner the gentle giant/saint” and “Garner who was out on bail and actively committing a crime right before he died resisting arrest”.

                In general his supporters pretend his record doesn’t exist. You are the first person I’ve heard suggest it was basically false.

                That’s fine and you might be right, but if he’d been unjustly targeted by the police for decades then it’s weird none of his supporters want to talk about that.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Again, what were his convictions? I see lots of talk about his arrests, but no one seems to talk about the convictions on his record. What does that tell us?

                A) The police like to arrest him for BS reasons, probably because he is a low level criminal.

                B) The police suck at their job with regard to gathering sufficient evidence for a DA to use, forcing the DA to dismiss or plea down to misdemeanor charges..

                C) Eric Garner was very well liked by the people in his community and no one would offer up evidence against him.

                There is a disconnect between arrests / charges, and convictions.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I can’t find his criminal record at all. It’s possible that every charge has been dropped and his friends and family never point that out. It’s possible that every trial has been lost and his friends and family never point that out.

                If that’s the case then it’s weird that there’s no mention since there’s social pressure to make him look good. When I look for him online all I see is media reports. When I try looking for him on those “find everyone” sites he apparently doesn’t exist and never has.

                I think what has happened is a combo of someone sealing the records (so google, etc won’t show links and the normally public records aren’t) and people not wanting those records shown.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                They’d need a court order to seal those records, and there’d be a record of that order. And a story of that. Also, if convictions were sealed, I’d reckon the arrest records would be as well. Lots of hits from the time of the incident regarding the arrest records, but no one managed to access the convictions?

                Doesn’t pass the smell test.

                Any of the good lawyers on this site with access to the appropriate databases able to settle this question?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

                But of course, the discriminatory targeting of people of color was the defining feature of NYPD’s Stop & Frisk program.

                Which gets back to my point, that taking the NYPD’s arrest records as indicative of actual crimes committed is naive.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Which gets back to my point, that taking the NYPD’s arrest records as indicative of actual crimes committed is naive.

                I agree completely.

                However the stats I’m focused on are national and should be expected to sidestep bias. We’re good at counting corpses and gun shot wounds.

                The story those statistics paint says violent crime isn’t uniformly distributed.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Dark Matter says:

                violent crime isn’t uniformly distributed.

                While I’m wearing my statistics hat, crime also is not evenly distributed within a race.

                The expectation should be that the minorities in quiet suburban neighborhoods aren’t 3x more likely to commit violent crimes, instead it’s members of certain neighborhoods are MUCH more likely.

                That reality is where we start to wonder if “stop and frisk” is a reasonable solution.

                Let’s assume that it’s not. How about keeping track of gang members and disarming them when they have a beef with someone else?

                I put up a link much earlier showing that those sorts of programs can dramatically reduce the murder rate, and that they look pretty racist in their implementation.

                So are we good with that or are we not good with that?Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                No, the problem is that you have a system design where preventing unjust outcomes is highly dependent upon the agents of that system doing the “right thing”, and not providing any type of incentive to do said “right thing”.

                It’s not about racists in the ranks, because if you filtered out all the racists, they’d go after the homeless, and the poor, or whatever disaffected demographic lacks the power to stand up to them.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                OK, so lets reframe my comment:

                I don’t see any path to a just society that runs through:

                1. Accept that large numbers of all institutions consider some disfavored minority as unequal and unworthy of full rights;
                2. ???
                3. Justice!Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Again, tell me how to control for #1, and we’ll have a starting point. Society has been struggling with that question since society started.

                #1 is a given. The trick is to design and implement incentives that over-ride that baser desire to treat a minority as disfavored. Like, say, giving gay people the right to sue The Kim Davis’ of the world.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Isn’t the entire concept of a republican democracy that “the people design their own system of governance”.

                What if some very large number of citizens decide that a minority should be stripped of equal protection and rights?

                There is no trick. There is no One Weird Trick that results in a just society.

                We either work very hard to convince ourselves and each other to accept and embrace each other as equals, or we don’t.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Motte and Bailey

                The problem is not that they majority has chosen to overtly strip away rights via the New Jim Crow. That is a completely separate issue.

                The majority has said that everyone deserves equal rights, that’s what the law books say. The problem is that despite what the law books say, some significant percentage of the population doesn’t actually buy into that, and when they are able to acquire power, there is little to nothing to cause them to adhere to the letter or spirit of the law.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                “equal rights” is probably the wrong lens through which to view this problem.

                Assume you’re thug who likes abusing power and you have a badge. Who do you abuse? Who do you go after to get to respect your authority?

                Your boss? The 1%? The top 50%?

                How about like all predators, you target the weak. The bottom 5% or so is still a crazy big number so you can get the “respect” you crave.

                On top of that, crime doesn’t fall evenly across the classes or races.

                1) Portland had a police unit which specialized in reducing gun violence by keeping guns out of violent “offenders”.
                2) The unit mostly targeted minorities.
                3) Portland got rid of the unit.
                4) Gun violence went up, a lot.

                Stockton, California did the same thing a decade ago and gun violence went back down after the city put the unit back.

                https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-shootings-police-violence-coronavirus-pandemic-704eeab551b452658cf2fa91a123b483Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Equal rights as in everyone is treated equally by the law. That is clearly not the case. Your point about crime not falling equally is true, but not relevant. Police abuse people in high crime areas who are not part of the problem simply because they are part of that bottom 5%. If the law treated all equally, that bottom 5% would not be abused by the badged bullies out there.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

                This habit of relying on crime statistics alone to extract large conclusions about society and behavior fails because the raw data of crime is itself polluted by bias.

                Most crimes don’t enter the database via a citizen summoning help (e.g. a 911 call).

                Most crimes enter the database when a police officer decides unilaterally that a crime has occurred (e.g., “I observed the driver veering over the line…”)

                This is critical because we know from other databases of information, that these determinations are made with prejudice.
                For example, white and black people use drugs at about the same rates yet black people are far more likely to be apprehended, charged, convicted and serve time.

                For another example, the LAPD had a policy of deliberately using “pretextual” traffic stops in communities of color:

                The Metro Division’s approach of conducting large numbers of investigative and “pretext” vehicle stops to combat violence in South L.A. came under intense scrutiny in 2019 after The Times reported that such stops disproportionately affected Black and Latino drivers. In October, a review by the department’s inspector general of hundreds of thousands of LAPD stops found that using traffic and other minor violations “as a pretext to identify or suppress more serious crimes” had subjected such drivers to far more stops than white drivers, despite the fact that they were less likely to be caught with contraband.
                https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-02-23/citing-data-error-lapd-acknowledges-hundreds-more-south-l-a-stops-than-acknowledged

                If one were to naively rely solely on police database of crimes, one would reach the erroneous conclusion that black people committed traffic offenses more than white people.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                This habit of relying on crime statistics alone to extract large conclusions about society and behavior fails because the raw data of crime is itself polluted by bias.

                If we count corpses, we end up with extremely different crime rates.

                If we look at people who show up at the ER injured, we see the same thing.

                There were a total of 603,000 emergency department visits in the US for non-fatal firearm assaults in the 10-year period between 2007–2016. For non-fatal firearm assaults with recorded race, 77,000 victims were white non-Hispanic, 261,000 were black and 94,000 were Hispanic, 8,500 were other non-Hispanic and for 162,000 the race was not recorded. (wiki)

                We see similar results in car jacking, and victim surveys. Ditto the National Youth Gang Survey Analysis. I could drop in a large wall of stats but they all say the same thing. If we ignore the bad data you point out we’re stuck with a ton of very good data.

                We have very different crime rates.

                “Equal” law enforcement will result in VASTLY different results in terms of who is arrested. Or alternatively, we can have very different levels of enforcement which means there will be a lot more black victims.

                Either way we’re going to look really racist because of the underlying reality.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

                You realize there are people who do this very thing, called “Sociologists”?

                And their conclusions are very different than yours, because they use much larger and better datasets than you are quoting here.

                Your data is correct but incomplete, and so your sweeping conclusions and implications are incorrect.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                And their conclusions are very different than yours, because they use much larger and better datasets than you are quoting here.

                Well then link to them, because wiki has a ton of links which go to really good data and the counter arguments (on the same wiki) seem like wishful thinking.

                “Large data sets” is things like “every ER visit and every corpse created over a 10 year period” which is what I’m using.

                “Wishful thinking” is things like “traffic stops in one city” (one of your arguments which wiki also covered).

                IMHO there is a lot of political and social pressure to “find” equality in the crime rates… but to do that you need to ignore dead bodies, gun shot injuries, victimisation rates, and gang membership.

                What argument and data makes all those things go away?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Yes, because those who have acquired the power to treat people unequally are given that power by the majority.

                Consider the point made around here frequently about racism in liberal communities, and it becomes clear that a clear majority of Americans are comfortable enough with structural racism that reform efforts are easily blocked.

                The “design” that you talk about is being created by people who want the exact outcome we are discussing.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Ah, well then, if the system is operating as designed and desired, why are we talking about it again?

                Clearly we are in the minority and we should simply respect the will of the majority.

                Or, perhaps, the system is operating as desired by a minority of well positioned persons, and the majority are simply too conditioned to imagine it working any other way.Report

              • JoeSal in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                The one weird trick to having a just society is to have high quality people make up that society and only agree that justice will only be justice when it looks that way to all involved.

                Until you accept the society you have and not the society you wish you had, you will be ever wishing for a non-reality.Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Two things can be true simultaneously. There may well be too many opportunities for unfortunate encounters between cops and (certain classes of civilians) because there are too many silly laws they are charged with enforcing. Getting rid of some of them might slightly reduce the opportunities. And that would be good.
                But it is also true that many unfortunate encounters happen with the enforcement (pretextual or otherwise) of the kinds of laws — like traffic laws — we can’t get rid of.
                I think we can all agree that, whatever the wisdom of the underlying laws, the appropriate response to someone selling loosies is an appearance ticket and the appropriate response to a traffic violation is a traffic ticket. This should not be hard for the cops to internalize. And if, for some reason, they can’t, they’ll get into unfortunate encounters even when enforcing laws we can’t get rid of.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to CJColucci says:

                I’m not disagreeing with you. We have a couple of ways of dealing with the issue of police being heavy handed with the disaffected and those who code as such. Especially given the history of how police were culturally and structurally encouraged to do so.

                One way is to trust to the better nature of the agents of the system. That is what we basically do now, and the results are wildly inconsistent. In some places it works about as well as can be expected, in others, it’s downright dystopian for the disaffected.

                Another is to minimize the ability of those agents to interact with the disaffected. Maybe that is reducing the volume of possible violations, or restricting police to interactions where only violations above a threshold are responded to (de minimus).

                A third is incentives, by expanding the ability of the public, including the disaffected, to seek justice through the courts. Perhaps by curtailing QI, or requiring that public defender budgets are equal to prosecutor budgets.

                Or maybe something else I haven’t thought of.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I agree with this general idea, that we have multiple ways of dealing with things.

                One is that, to my point, we do need more citizens to embrace the idea of equality under that law, and really lean into its implementation.

                Another is to implement the various reform measures floating around.

                And yeah, minimizing the number of enforcement mechanisms which call for armed agents is a good thing generally speaking.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                we do need more citizens to embrace the idea of equality under that law

                I do agree with this, and I do honestly think it’s a problem currently in American society. It’s like everyone read Animal Farm and got exactly the wrong message from it.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I think Chip’s point is that your second method isn’t going to work because the police are always to use whatever violations or threshold they have to justify their actions. Therefore, there will still be racist actions against minorities by the police because they will just refilter everything through whatever they have available.

                Solution 2 also requires the citizenry to be comfortable with an amount of disorder that they generally have not been shown to like. Hardcore politicos of a certain bent might take delight in a system where the number of violations are low. Most people are just going to see a wild and crazy graffiti filled wasteland.

                Another issue with solution two is that it requires the entire citizenry to be comfortable with a certain amount ofReport

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to LeeEsq says:

                Sure, that’s a fair criticism, as is my criticism of solution 1, which relies upon our police being staffed with Unicorns.

                We could get closer to Solution 1, if we completely upended how we train and credential police, and adjusted their job description, but no one seems to want to do that.

                So that leaves us with incentives, Solution 3.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                There does seem to be success with rolling police, fire, and EMT into one department and having people rotate duty. It is expensive but the people who join the police to do violence don’t seem to like it that much when they have also fight fires or do EMT work. So it keeps out a lot of people we don’t want in the police.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to LeeEsq says:

                Any examples you can think of?Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          And as for “counterfeiting“, let me ask you a simple question:

          Did the cops collect the $20 bill that was at issue?

          Don’t click on the link! Just tell me whether you think that the $20 bill was counterfeit.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          Interesting that you pick two crimes that are harms against a private party and one that is actually a serious crime (the act of actually printing the fake bills) versus what actually happened (passing a fake bill – not really counterfeiting unless you can prove he knew, or had reason to believe, the bill was fake).

          Do you understand the concept of “de minimus”?Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

        Jaybird, it’s a clear expression of your racist bootlicking, of your reflexive defense of Trumpism, that you consider any degree of leniency for that particular crime. Maybe it’s “du minimus” if you’re a white male landlord, but to everyone else it’s proven to be physically harmful, and it’s only reasonable that the government do something about it.Report

    • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Counter-fitting is important enough to attract police attention, after they talked to him they realized it wasn’t the only problem.

      It’s been a while since I’ve watched the video, but if memory serves he was clearly high enough that he shouldn’t be driving.

      Now after that we have the whole “resisting arrest while claiming he’s not resisting arrest” thing which is where he really got in trouble.Report

      • Swami in reply to Dark Matter says:

        Exactly. My take on the issue is that stuff can go very wrong when you resist arrest. Don’t do it! If the BLM movement had focused more on encouraging people to never resist arrest, then they could have actually saved some lives, instead of leading to a huge escalation in crime and violence in inner cities and hundreds if not eventually thousands of dead blacks.

        We need police reform, but that reform isn’t going to occur by pretending the root cause is racism gone amuck. That just leads to animosity and diversion.

        Police reform + respect of police + root cause inside-out reforms of dysfunctional subcultures of crime and violence.Report

  5. Kazzy says:

    “officers Lane and Keung responded to the scene at 8:08 p.m. It was their first week as full-duty police officers and their first day riding together as partners.”
    -and-
    “Moments later, officers Derek Chauvin and Tou Thao arrived on the scene in a separate squad car. Dispatch calls indicate the two senior officers were advised not to go to the scene, but Thao later explained to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension he believed the two rookies needed their assistance.”

    Is it common practice to put two rookies — on their first week, no less — in a car together and dispatch them to calls? I imagine the thinking was, “Hey, it’s a minor call… what’s the worst that could happen?” And, yes, it was Chauvin that ultimately did the deed. But maybe the whole thing proceeds differently if more experienced officers were on the scene from the jump? It feels like a small thing but might have been a difference maker. Maybe alongside the question of, “When should the police get involved?” and “How should the police involve themselves?” should be the question of “Which police should be involved?”Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

      This is one of the weird things. If the two rookies had handled it themselves… I have no idea what might have happened but it seems like the odds of Floyd surviving go up.

      They certainly don’t go down.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

        Yes. At the same time, a more experienced officer handles it without guns ever being draw and the whole thing escalating.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

          I think that if someone wanted to argue that a more experienced officer would have knelt on the guy’s neck, they wouldn’t be obviously dishonest for making it.Report

          • Kazzy in reply to Jaybird says:

            I left a pretty important “maybe” out of that comment. Whoops.

            I wonder if there is data on whether complaints about abuse and what not tend to be higher or lower for rookies. Probably not. But it sure would be fascinating to see.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Kazzy says:

              What are the numbers for rookies vs. veterans? I dunno.

              I’d like to suggest an alternate framing. Rookies are more likely to blow the whistle than veterans.

              There have been a handful of high-profile firings of cops who speak out… and the police unions, for some reason, seem much more impotent than when there is a situation where a cop abuses his or her authority.Report

  6. Jaybird says:

    What about in opening/closing statements?

    Report

    • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

      Turning him into a martyr and saint may be overreach.

      I wonder if that’s what a seriously experienced prosecutor does or if it’s a sign of inexperience.Report