The George Floyd Act wouldn't have saved George Floyd's life. That says it all

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/04/the-george-floyd-act-wouldnt-have-saved-george-floyds-life-thats-says-it-all

On Wednesday night, the House of Representatives voted to pass the George Floyd Act, named after the Black man killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin last summer. Among many reforms, the act seeks to ban racial profiling, overhaul qualified immunity for police, and ban the use of chokeholds. While these seem like good measures, they are woefully insufficient to stop police violence. These reforms could not have even saved George Floyd’s life.

To be clear, Floyd did not die from a chokehold. A police officer put his knee to Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. A medical examiner’s autopsy reported “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression”. Floyd also had blunt force trauma to his head, face and shoulders. Banning chokeholds is important, as we should reduce the number of tactics that the police can employ to be dangerous. However, the problem with policing is precisely that – they can kill people using a diverse number of tactics. Shooting, kneeling, punching, suffocating, Tasing. Congress banned one practice, and not even the one responsible for the homicide.

Floyd was also probably not racially profiled. He did not have to be if he was breaking the law. Reportedly, Floyd tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill at a corner store. The clerk called the police because using counterfeit money is illegal. The definition of racial profiling is when police uses someone’s race to suspect that they have committed a crime. Here, Floyd’s act may have constituted a crime and the police showed up to fix it. What’s more criminal than counterfeit cash is the society where people live off of these transactions in corner stores in the first place. The police cannot solve this problem. They can show up and attempt to stop the crime, but they can’t stop the underlying conditions that give rise to it: class exploitation and poverty. Floyd appeared to need cash, not the police.

Congress has had several opportunities to give people what they actually need under the pandemic: money. George Floyd had tested positive for Covid-19 in April. By the time of his death, lawmakers had only distributed $1,200 to the public, and not everyone received this stimulus check. I wonder if Floyd would have used a counterfeit $20 if Congress would have issued $2,000 a month to the public as several activists and progressive legislators have been demanding. George Floyd’s blood is on their hands.

[Elessar Zappa]

1. You gotta start somewhere.

Incremental change is better than no change. Of course even this bill won’t get passed as the GOP will surely filibuster it.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. In which case, it's not even incremental change.

[dsc]

3. removing qualified immunity might well have

In virtually every other walk of life we see that getting large judgments for even legal behavior changes said behavior. I have to say I think a few 7 figure judgements against both cities and cops and the behavior that was witnessed in re George Floyd would stop dead it its tracks.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. We actually don't know if lawsuits against cops and cities make a difference, for a variety of

reasons.

We do know, for example, that:

But five years later, Cleveland has paid more money in police misconduct settlements than in the five years before Rice was killed. In 2017, according to public records obtained by FiveThirtyEight and The Marshall Project, the city paid $7.9 million (including $3 million for half of the payment to the Rice family). In 2019, it paid $6 million. That’s more than the city spent on police misconduct in the entire five-year period between 2010 and 2014.

But as with most efforts to dig into cop misconduct, the data is restricted, incomplete, or plain wrong. And in the end, the taxpayers are the ones who pay.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. Afternoon kick.