Saints Or Sinners?

So, the inevitable (given the filmed evidence), verdict of guilty has been reached in the George Floyd death court case ...

George Floyd - Black Saint?

  ... when Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty, by the court of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter .... which is an awful lot of murders in one offence (I assume that the US has a different definition of these crimes than the UK).

Oddly of course, filmed evidence can mean jack squat in some cases. One can't help thinking of OJ Simpson's attempts to evade the police, and avoid arrest for murder in a dramatic filmed car chase. But then a black majority (9 Blacks, 1 Hispanics, 2 Whites) jury refused to find him guilty of the double homicide of two white people. They were probably the only 10 men and women in the world (10 out of 12 voted for acquittal), who now think that was the correct verdict .... so, stranger things have happened, than if Mr Chauvin had been found not guilty this week.

However no one sensible could seriously argue that the death of Mr Floyd was not as a direct result of a police officer using excessive and unwarranted force in restraining him, while an arrest was being made. Kneeling on a man's neck is rarely, if ever justified, and if unavoidable, should only be for the time it takes to handcuff the suspect .... and not nine minutes, including well after his handcuffing.

However, the idea that Mr Floyd is now some sort of saint, worthy of statues, and no sinner is just ludicrous .... pictures of him with angels wings are actually rather sad. He had a long criminal past, with a fairly high, if usually non violent conviction record ... but in 2007 he had committed an armed home invasion robbery in Texas, when he entered a woman’s home, pointed a gun at her stomach, and searched her home for drugs and money ... so would that sort of record result in him being sent to heaven with angels wings, even if he was murdered? 

Jack Was No Saint And He's Gone To Hell!

I ask, because on that sort of logic, one has to assume that Hitler, Stalin, and even Jack the Ripper (if they had been murdered by an errant police officer. Mr Chauvin for example, had already had dozens of complaints previously filed against him, over his arrest manner and attitudes), would also qualify for a place heaven ... and no one religious would seriously suggest that.

Sure, get justice for Mr Floyd ... the police officer (what ever his race), was very wrong to employ that tactic in making the arrest, and certainly should have stopped once Mr Floyd was cuffed, but don't turn Floyd into a black martyr, saint, or angel .... his family have already had $27 (£19m) millions in 'justice' already .... and that was before a fair trial of Mr Chauvin had even taken place ... is that the new equality justice in the USA? 

Mini Update: January 2022

The Floyd family suffered another tragedy recently, but not one that provoked any outcry by BLM activists, or Oprah Winfrey etc. Arianna Delane, the four year old niece of George Floyd was shot and injured in her families house, when someone drove by and shot bullets in to building. She has reportedly recovered from the injury. Drive by shootings are a plague in black community areas, but are not condemned nationally by black activists or street mobs ... they target the wrong things.