Given the irrational and potentially violent, dangerous, and lethal behaviour of an Excited Delirium Syndrome subject, any law enforcement officer interaction with a person in this situation risks significant injury or death to either the officer or the subject who has a potentially lethal medical syndrome. This already challenging situation has the potential for intense public scrutiny coupled with the expectation of a perfect outcome. Anything less creates a situation of potential public outrage. Unfortunately, this dangerous medical situation makes perfect outcomes difficult in many circumstances.
– White Paper Report on Excited Delirium Syndrome, issued by the American College of Emergency Physicians, September 10th 2009
Ya think?!
When we get to see the bodycam videos of the police officers, we’ll know whether George Floyd had Excited Delirium Syndrome. Had the officers switched off their cams beforehand, that absence (like Hillary Clinton’s missing emails) would speak volumes. If the cams show a calm Mr Floyd ready to be put in a police car, then the officers’ defence of excited delirium will be tossed with contempt. As we’ve heard nothing about the cams from the media, they may not support the narrative.
– in the video we have been allowed to see, a panicking Mr Floyd says he can’t breathe – showing that he can breathe but it’s not doing him much good. Despite his being able to breathe, and so speak, his organs are begging for oxygen they’re increasingly not getting. That fits final-stage Excited Delirium Syndrome.
– His autopsy showed fentanyl and methamphetamine. That drug cocktail is good for giving yourself Excited Delirium Syndrome, especially when it is far from your first time.
I hope we get to find out at the trial, if not before. Till then, if anyone tries to make you swallow the media’s narrative whole, add a pinch of salt.
Meanwhile, this grim subject at least raises a grimly amusing question: are the politically correct experiencing a kind of excited delirium syndrome? Some common symptoms are very much present, especially in the rioters:
remorse… and understanding of surroundings … are absent in such subjects. … subjects are known to be irrational, often violent … delirium and agitation … destructive or bizarre behavior generating calls to police … ongoing struggle despite futility … Subjects are incoherent and combative … delusional, paranoid
Not yet observed in the rioters (AFAIK) are
unusual physical strength and stamina
nor
Impervious to pain
(unless it’s the pain of others), and I don’t think we’ve yet had a chance to observe whether the rioters would show
Significant resistance to physical restraint
or an absence of “normal fear and … rational thoughts for safety”, as there has not been much physical restraint, let alone cause for the rioters to feel afraid. Since we are clearly in the early “sudden onset” stage of “violence and hyperactivity”, it is no surprise we have not yet seen any symptoms from the syndrome’s late stage:
“sudden cessation of struggle, respiratory arrest and death.” (The Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, 2010)
If we make the diagnosis, how should we treat excited delirium in the politically correct?
the specific physical control methods employed should optimally minimize the time spent struggling, while safely achieving physical control. The use of multiple personnel with training in safe physical control measures is encouraged. … research is needed to establish field protocols and techniques that allow police, emergency medical services and hospital personnel to interact with these agitated, aggressive patients in a manner safe both for the patients and the providers.
I share the writers’ desire for safety all round, but while this research on how to achieve it proceeds, I refer readers to the top-of-post quote: these perfect outcomes are ‘difficult’ – and these US physicians seem to have perfected the art of English understatement. (I assume this belief – that achieving swift safe control is essential, to end the subject’s wild agitated activity that is speeding his own death – is part of why the elected Minneapolis authorities teach their police to use knee-to-neck-hold as department policy.)
A less technical summary seems to be saying the same thing.
Deescalation does not have a high likelihood of changing outcomes significantly …
The subjects require physical restraint (this is because if they continue to struggle it accelerates the death) …
Once the decision to do this has been made, action needs to be swift and efficient …
I feel sure this is the treatment the rioters need. Whether it would have been (or indeed was) also the right (albeit, sadly, too late) treatment for Mr Floyd is something the bodycam videos will tell us.
—-
(In the above quotes, I have expanded ‘ExDS’ to ‘Excited Delirium Syndrome’, ‘LEO’ to ‘law enforcement officer’ or just ‘officer’, and ‘EMS’ to ’emergency medical services’, for ease of reading.)
Former LAPD officer “Jack Dunphy” (at National Review) noted that it is now routine for a criminal resisting arrest to shout “I can’t breathe” the moment hands are laid on him.
The superhuman strength claim is bovine excrement. They used to claim the same malarkey about PCP, but no one has yet produced a suspect on PCP dead-lifting a truck. Even the NIH calls it an illusion. The significantly decreased pain perception can (and does) allow the affected person to exert themselves to the point of tearing their own ligaments, dislocating joints, and even breaking bones, but they don’t gain any real strength beyond their normal capabilities. Bringing such a person safely under control is a nightmare, but no, police officers, sorry, you’re not fighting a Hulk out there.
>– in the video we have been allowed to see, a panicking Mr Floyd says he can’t breathe <
Fentanyl/porn star floyd is a nice scam like covid 19, travonmartin, globalwarming,"handsupdontshoot", et al. Libertarians are stupidest clowns on the planet
Plamus (June 7, 2020 at 2:27 am,) I agree entirely about ExDS subjects not having actual superhuman strength, but I would compare reports claiming they do to George Floyd’s “I can’t breathe”. In both cases, the statements were not literally true but expressed a very real psychological perception. As you say
My OP initial reference puts it more technically:
Just as it is very understandable that George Floyd was saying, “I can’t breathe”, though not quite literally true, so it is very understandable that LEOs emerging from such an experience are apt to say, “He had (seemed to have) superhuman strength.” As you quote the NIH as saying, it is an illusion.
I would also say they are not in fact impervious to pain but their body’s reports of it, like much else, are being utterly ignored by their manic minds, until the late stage when the overwhelming input from the body finally breaks through and there is “abrupt cessation of struggle”.
“Excited Delirium” is and has been for decades code for “Death by Cop”
It is well known in the legal profession that the entire idea is crap. A lie agreed upon. A legal fiction.
Similar to “resisting arrest” when there is no corresponding actual arrest is just code for “Contempt of Cop”.
I am actually ashamed you’re giving it any weight.
Heck of an illusion. I remember in lockup one day, as we met our new clients for arraignment (first appearance before a judge after being arrested) I got a guy who was still quite high.
I spoke to him, and he seemed off – schizo, talking to the air. He wasn’t communicating, to anyone, so I marked him down as, basically, “get him through this appearance and set him up with the docs.” Not much more you can do. I had, like, fourteen clients assigned in this morning custody arraignment session.
I moved on to other clients in the lockup meeting room, and I hear a fight start in the room. It was this guy, ignoring blows from batons and throwing two guards across the room. Then he swung his elbow into a guard’s head so hard that he shattered everything between his wrist and his shoulder, along with the guard’s skull.
He was feeling no pain, and so it was an illusion – HIS illusion – that gave him, maybe not “superhuman strength”, but the ability to push through pain and do rather superhuman things. It might be a technical misnomer – but I think it works nicely to communicate truth. To call the concept “bovine excrement” is to identify as an academic or hobbyist with no real life in it.
In what, the mergers and acquisition set? Prosecutors?
I clerked in district court for a year in school and saw thousands of crim cases. I was a crim defence lawyer for a number of years. I also did contract city prosecutions when I could get the contracts.
That’s just to show that I was in “the legal profession”, and what you profess, I don’t remember being the case. At all.
No momo, you are angry, not ashamed, because admitting the possibility undermines the narrative.
Just as Rich Rostrom (June 7, 2020 at 1:39 am) correctly informs us that it is known for
but George Floyd was not even remotely engaging in deliberate lying when he said it, so a cop who wrongly kills a suspect, in circumstances where a plea of self-defence won’t wash, may well plead ExDS, but that doesn’t mean ExDS isn’t a real thing, any more than false pleas of self-defence mean self-defence is never claimed for real.
Early in my post, I clearly state that I don’t know what will come out at the trial. (I specifically refer to the ExDS plea being “tossed with contempt” if the evidence fails to support it.) You, momo, don’t know either – but you lack the honesty to admit this to yourself.
The CCTV from the shop across the road, where Floyd’s car was parked shows the initial interaction. He is cuffed and walks calmly with the officer to the side of the building where he sits down. Then he is walked across the street to the police car. I can’t see anything from this that there was anything unusual in his behaviour. His subsequent attempts to resist arrest appear to be by going limp and falling down.
watch and make your own judgement. I presume a jury will get the opportunity to do likewise. However, the politicisation of this case makes a fair trial increasingly problematic.
Meanwhile, whites lives don’t matter so much.
PS. No riots. And welcome to diversity.
Why would blacks – or black-centric whites – riot in support of whites? This is more a condemnation of the group cohesion of caucasians – or their willingness to get involved – than anything else.
Have any of these protesters articulated what it is that they actually want? I can understand going on a protest march to express disapproval of some or other government policy and maybe get it changed or modified. What is to be acheived by protesting against something that has already happened? If you are trying to get the law changed to make this type of incident less likely in the future, why would a foreign government care what you want?
What exactly is the point of rioting about something which happened in another country. If they were protesting outside the US embassy then I could vaguely understand it.
At this point UK protests just seem to be an excuse for mindless violence without purpose, other than to express the meme that “All white people are racist”, which is in and of itself racist.
“What exactly is the point of rioting about something which happened in another country. If they were protesting outside the US embassy then I could vaguely understand it.”
They’ve been feed the victimhood narrative from birth.
Now kneel before them, bigot.
Well yes, most white people stopped being racist decades ago. This is a bit of a problem for the publically funded race relations industry who have to keep stirring up the problem or else be out of a job.
Also, was Mr. Floyd a Nobel prize winning scientist who was on the verge of finding a cure for cancer, or a worthless career criminal that nobody will miss? If we are going to find a poster boy for the, oh so downtrodden black community, is he really the best that we can do?
Loving how it’s racist to judge black people by the actions of black criminals, but not racist to judge white people by a white potential criminal imminently having his day in court…
Mono, you have fake news leaking out your eyes. How dull!
I have been informed — several times — that it is impossible for blacks to be racist. But it is annoying to myself be accused of racism-because-white. That’s why I’ve stopped reading newspapers. After a lifetime of it, it’s lost its charm.
Minneapolis is going to disband (not defund, disband) their police force, according to city council members.
Surely this is going to improve the situation in Minneapolis *wink and nod* … the criminals at least will have a grand time, for a while.
“They’ve been fed the victimhood narrative from birth”
Why is that SO easy?
They wouldn’t be the first to do so in recent times, but they would be the largest.
Compton,CA did it in 2000, essentially falling back to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs department, Camden, NJ did it in 2012 switching from city police to a new countywide police department.
Given the “Community Policing” model suggested might mean something closer to a devolved model with each sub-division being autonomous and responsible to their respective local communities, with officers coming from and living in those communities.
This would mean where you have a majority Somalian community, having majority Somalian officers and the like, which might be more responsive and less likely to behave like the “bad apples” of the MPD. The downside is that you get the policing you deserve, so don’t be surprised if you also end up with Somalian policing and an increase in corruption.
I would certainly expect the police union to challenge the decision through the courts on behalf of their existing membership. After all, unless the existing police are going to be redeployed in their entirety (unlikely, since that would defeat the purpose), then such a change would mean the vast majority of current MPD officers losing their jobs.
Good luck with that one…
White cops only go into white areas, black cops only go into black ones effectively.
Can’t imagine many white cops would object.
Wonder what black cops would think and I wonder exactly what their brothers would expect?
Step 1: Announce that you’re going to disband the police, thus placing the police union in so much fear that it will no longer be viable that it will sit still for the lesser major changes that you are really aiming for.
Step 2: Break up the PD into the individual wards (as per John Galt above.) Place each branch under the control of each individual Council Member instead of central control by the mayor.
Step 3: Each Council Member (remember, these are the people voting on this right now) will control hiring and firing, tactics, promotions, review boards, etc. Facially, this will make the small PD units more responsive to their communities. More to the point, this will set the council members up for huge graft opportunities. Minneapolis will become the new Chicago, with thirteen wards and thus thirteen Machines to share the graft.
These plans are already written and ready to go.
We both know (because we’re white people and therefore racist) what will happen.
Those sub-divisions / wards with minority representation (especially minority councillors) will be either overwhelmingly or exclusively from those communities and start doing to the whites what they “accuse” the whites of doing to them, leading to further rounds of white flight out to more remote majority white communities.
If (as would make sense), each sub-division / ward has to finance its own policing then you end up with the wards which have the most crime having to have the highest taxes to pay for said policing. Unless of course you retain a city-wide funding model even when you have sub-division / ward level policing, which means white people funding the policing of coloured communities by coloured police. That’s a recipe for disaster for a start.
I’m not saying it’s not worth trying, but the unintended consequences are potentially massive.
Exactly so and I expect that the racist and corrupt politicians of Minneapolis are salivating over the potential for graft. Elect Somalia…become Somalia.
Minneapolis could transform itself into the next Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, which I am sure is not a model they are aspiring towards.
IIUC, this is the official Hennepin county charge of 3rd-degree murder against PC Chauvin for the death of George Floyd.
The following link is to a very critical assessment of the charge. Its author presents as a civil attorney and specifically states, “I’m no Minnesota lawyer”.
There is extensive quotation from The Minneapolis Police Policy On Use of Force. (The author typo’s “The Minneapolis police police”, and my first version of this comment wrote “the Minneapolis policy policy”. 🙂 ) The author includes a direct link to the policy document (which I had already seen but have not given because the direct link is barred to non-trivial UK or EU-originated access).
A conspiracy theorist would argue that the complaint – the very claim that PC Chauvin is guilty of murder – states that “George Floyd was actively resisting” because wicked cop-protectors have intentionally built into this nominally-accusing document the certainty of ultimate acquittal. However, in the press conference at which this complaint was presented, it was explicitly stated that it had been written after viewing the officers’ body cameras – so it seems most unlikely that this statement is false. In the bodycam videos, the officers speculate whether Floyd’s resistance could betoken ‘excited delirium’. It seems that if it was, it was milder than the terrifying example witnessed by bobby b (June 7, 2020 at 11:35 am), where there was neither need nor room for speculation.
URLs provided FYI.
Me:
bobby b:
Then I call this situation a nightmare, and you proceed to describe a nightmare.
So you agree that I am correct, disagree with my phrasing, and because I don’t use your preferred incorrect “but I think it works nicely” term I am an academic or hobbyist? Well played. So I am sure you’ll be calling the sky orange from now on – because 1) I think it works nicely to communicate “truth”, and 2) you would not want to identify as an academic or hobbyist. Right?
Plamus (June 8, 2020 at 4:44 pm), bobby b was indeed agreeing with your facts but making the point (relevant IMHO) that “bovine excrement” was an inappropriately strong way of saying it. The terrifying psychological reality would be better described as, e.g. “very understandable, but mistaken” rather than “bovine excrement”.
This whole conversation is occurring because some lefties have an anti-truth agenda. My care to note, whenever I talk about it, that George Floyd’s “I can’t breathe” was psychologically understandable and medically informative though not precisely accurate, reflects that. In a world where the PC pretend that ExDS is not a thing, the better to feed their lying agenda, I do not blame bobby b for advising against calling “bovine excrement” on a claim that those who witness a full-blown case will understandably make.
If you can see your way to toning down the “bovine excrement”, bobby b might see his way to toning down the “academic or hobbyist”. Just a thought.
Bobby b was actually qualifying me (who had agreed with you) directly and you only indirectly; I was grateful for his information, and saw no need to argue about the advice on tone.
I’ve spent a large amount of my adult life paying highly trained professionals to choke me out*, every Friday night.
It’s totally plausible to *feel* that you can’t breathe, while technically you can, because you’re having one or other carotid closed off.
*What? I’m a ju-jitsu-ka *halo* and Friday is my class. Minds out of the gutter, you lot.
“so it is very understandable that LEOs emerging from such an experience are apt to say, “He had (seemed to have) superhuman strength.” As you quote the NIH as saying, it is an illusion.”
If you want to be technical about it, the illusion would actually be that we don’t *all* have that strength. Everyone’s muscles are actually a lot stronger than we think they are, but the nervous system sets limits on them (around 50-70%) to prevent damage, giving us the illusion that our muscles are weaker – we think it is the muscles that cannot push any harder, when in fact it is the limiter stopping it. Nobody has genuinely ‘superhuman’ strength. But we usually have the illusion of having subhuman strength.
It’s a similar effect with stretching. If you do stretching exercises to learn to do the splits, say, it’s easy to imagine that our muscles and tendons are gradually becoming longer. But if this was really the case, they wouldn’t work in normal use. Our muscles have to be sized to the length of our bones. What seems to be happening is that the brain sets a limit on how far it thinks a muscle can stretch without damage, based largely on how far it goes in normal use, and what you’re actually doing is training the nervous system to accept that the muscle can safely stretch further without damage. (We need such limiters – as noted, our muscles are strong enough to break our own bones.) Stretching before exercise, you find the muscles loosen up gradually, so after 10-20 minutes of stretching you can stretch much further than when you started the session. That’s clearly not the muscles physically growing longer, or developing any new capability. It’s a neurological effect. We can all do the splits, the ‘illusion’ is that we can’t.
Of course, the distinction is somewhat academic. If you’re trying to restrain somebody whose limiters are off, when yours are still on, the effect is going to be much the same as if they had ‘superhuman’ strength.
Niall, and bobby b, I apologize for the language. I’ll try to keep my writing to a higher standard in the future.
To be clear, I have no strong opinion on this case in particular, but I am very well aware that if police are faced with a suspect who is resistant to verbal commands and pain compliance because of a physical or mental condition, they are left with very few (mostly) non-lethal options, and those don’t make for great optics either (taser). I am not taking a side here, and I do not expect police to be counselors, anesthesiologists, EMTs, and emotionally detached machines.
CSB: My ex-wife – a lab tech/supervisor at a small rural hospital – had quite a few stories about having to draw blood from DUI drivers that cops brought in. One of them featured a guy 6’5″, 250lbs or so dude, all muscle, who was cuffed and on the brink of actively resisting – vocal, threatening the cops, etc. When he saw her all scared, he winked and said something “I’m not gonna hurcha, sweetie, let’s get this done” and proceeded to calm down, behave while uncuffed, and then asked her on a date while being led out. It was crack and alcohol – the good old uppers-and-downers combo.
For my part, I apologize for the slur. I, sadly, DO have strong opinions about this, and sometimes let them take hold. I focused on the BE comment, taking it to mean more than it apparently did. I’ll accept NiV’s correction – that while “superhuman” might be an exaggeration, “relatively superhuman compared to the rest of us who perceive pain” works.
That is very interesting, neonsnake (as is the anecdote of Plamus’ lady and the discussion from NiV about pain-limiters; thanks, guys).
Because George Floyd died ultimately of a heart attack (however caused), I imply in my OP that his “I can’t breathe” was likely a symptom of the development of that. (That still seems likely.)
However, in The Minnesota Police Policy on use of Force, what it calls the ‘unconscious’ neck hold is IIUC aiming to close a carotid. What it calls the conscious neck hold is not, but as you don’t imply you lost consciousness, neonsnake, maybe you mean pressure on it is enough to cause the impression.
(FWIW, I’ve also been told a known occasional symptom of fentanyl is a frozen-chest effect that can give the subject that impression all on its own.)
I think it would be educational if the police union in Minneapolis announced that all cops in the area had developed a nasty cold, and had to take a few days off. A couple of days without the cops should cure this “disband the police” nonsense.
Apologies to Bobby b, who I believe lives around there for making a suggestion that would turn his city into a wasteland in just two days.
I am also curious how this will all affect the election (after all everything in the news is entirely about the election). It seems to me that the democrats have let the genie out of the bottle. All those white suburban soccer moms offended by Trump’s excruciatingly bad manners, will surely be scared straight but the prospect of no police to complain about the neighbor’s lawn to. Surely the leaders of the democrat party know what a huge risk that is. But the flip side is they see the treatment of the Minneapolis mayor, and know that not genuflecting to this one will lose them the crazy left. It is quite a dilemma.
Having said that, I know a lot of those soccer moms, and they might well still be more offended by Trump than the prospect of no cops. I guess we will have to see how it all plays out.
I note today that Biden’s Campaign officially came out against defunding the police, with suitably cloying, prostrating language about how racist we all are, and how we desperately need “hope and change”. It is notable that Biden did not come out and do so himself.
For what it’s worth, I am not an MMA practitioner, so I’ll of course defer to, and ask for, neonsnake’s opinion on this, which I found informative.
I have not, indeed, ever lost consciousness!
But yeah. It causes the impression, especially in panicky-heat-of-the-moment-adrenaline situations. When people feel something round their neck, they *think* that their air-flow is being cut-off, when often it’s the blood-flow. But the feeling isn’t dissimilar.
I’m not either, I do Japanese rather than Brazilian ju-jitsu. An MMA practitioner would be able to answer with more certainty, as they’re trained much more than I am in floor-work (I’m drilled to put the other guy on the floor, but to stay standing myself).
So, with those caveats, all I can really say is that in training, we have zero-tolerance for people who carry on with any sort of lock or hold once the opponent has submitted (“tapped-out”). Worth noting that people don’t usually “carry on” through sheer thuggery, but because they don’t think they’ve applied the shoulder lock properly, but haven’t noticed that the incidental lock they have on the knee has gone too far, while all their focus is on the opponent’s elbow, say.
We’re also told to tap-out early, when practicing. No point being a hard-man – once your opponent has the particular lock that your training – tap-out.
We’re especially conscious of that if we’re training chokes and strangles. I’m fortunate enough to not really know how much damage they can do, but our sensei are very clear – let go immediately, or you’re risking permanent damage.
Doesn’t wholly answer your question, but maybe points in a direction, at least.
Niall – you are trying to spread the truth.
Sadly, in our Frankfurt School of Marxism dominated world, “the lies have gone round the world – before the truth has even got its boots on”.
For example, the very first thing President Trump did was contact the family of George Floyd to express his condolences – he also ordered the Justice Department to investigate the death, even though the Minneapolis Police Department is not part of the Federal Government.
Has the media explained any of the above? Of course NOT.
The media, and many politicians, have just done “Orange Man Bad” chanting.
I hope so, Paul, but first and foremost I am just trying to discover the truth.
As regards the claim that ruthless PC Chauvin asphyxiated George Floyd by crushing his windpipe in full view of videoing bystanders, I can believe the narrative or my lying eyes. However that leaves other questions open.
– Were he and his colleagues providing the only treatment that had any hope for Floyd’s medical condition, or would CPR have provided a better, if still unlikely, hope of saving his life than continuing to restrain him? Were they slack or professional, callous or active, as regards his health? Was there any evidence of malice or was there evidence of its opposite?
– What happened in the minutes between the end of the security footage, when Floyd is headed to the police car to be taken to the station and question about the $20 forgery, and the beginning of the later footage, when one bystander says
and another says
but the police are no longer trying to get him in the car; they have summoned an ambulance and are restraining him till it arrives to take him to hospital, not the police station (it arrives and removes him shortly after he dies).
Etc., Etc.
When we get to see complete video footage we may be able to answer these and other questions. When we had the complete report on the Brown-Wilson shooting in Ferguson, we knew that Hands up! Don’t shoot! was fiction, but it was not a waste of time to assess how likely it was prove so while that narrative was being pushed.
It would be good if some who are on our side were to reflect on the Zimmerman and Wilson cases.
writes an author who wants statues of Robert E. Lee left up. Why not just wish the officers a fair trail, without fear or favour? Why let people who have lied before tell you to trust them, not your lying eyes? Why pretend you know, as if the trial were a formality, when the trial is to test what we know?
I’d love to spread the truth, but I wish more people just wanted to know it. Alas, many seem to prefer what could prove a “mediocre compromise between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong”. The idea seems to be: “give them the Floyd story, the better to argue against the rioting”.
I’m not at all sure “the better” follows. I’m more sure we will only know at the trial.
@NK:
I’d rather see the opportunities. We do have problems with Justice in the U.S. that very much need fixing:
– qualified immunity, a from-whole-cloth invention of the courts
– too many cops (thanks Bill Clinton!), which has caused cities to increase issuance of traffic fines for fundraising purposes
– no-knock warrants(!!)
– militarized police
– civil asset forfeiture(!)
– chummy cops and local prosecutors who, having to work with each other, have great social pressure to cover-up bad policing
– we lack the right to argue for jury nullification
– SWATting (this is a crime often committed by lefties against their enemies)
A lot of these issues are eminently fixable.
Nico (June 10, 2020 at 8:19 pm), it’s a sensible list and I’d gladly see rioting, statue-smashing and BLM replaced with it, were that possible. However recent events complicate things.
You are quite right. If the upcoming trial demonstrates that cops without qualified immunity can rely on getting a fair trial, even when a huge narrative is deployed against them, then the argument that cops don’t need it will become easier. The reverse is likewise true.
A good historical example is John Adams getting the British soldiers acquitted on charges arising from the Boston ‘massacre’. In part, he was demonstrating that Britain’s trying to exempt British soldiers from being tried in American courts – the 1770s version of qualified immunity – was unjustified.
Less of the state is great, in police as elsewhere. However the rioters are doing their best to persuade people that right now there are too few police in rioting neighbourhoods. Cops, if less hobbled by their PC leaders, could have been fewer and yet ended the riots almost before they began. But it may need quite a few police, national guards and feds to put the released genie back in the bottle, and people will sanely fear what announcing police cuts will signal to the rioters.
Very desirable to reduce the state here as elsewhere. However when rioters show up with molotov cocktails for police cars, the police will demand they be given better toys, not lose those they have.
Very desirable to fix. However, right now, the prosecutors look like they are deferring more to the mob and Soros than to the police.
It’s a good list Nico. But as with proposals to improve the economy in these districts, rioting can destroy what it takes some time to regain, never mind to advance beyond.
Qualified immunity protects officials from money lawsuits claiming that the official violated someone’s constitutional rights. (Note that it has nothing to do with criminal law.)
It is “qualified” in the respect that the official cannot be penalized unless he has “violated clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” That’s it. That’s the entire qualification.
So, it’s not that much of a bar to holding someone responsible for their actions. If you cannot show that the official has done something that is clearly wrong, you can’t take his millions.
If a cop violates the law – goes outside of approved procedure and chokes someone out with his baton on the windpipe, for example – QI gives him no help.
If a cop does exactly what he’s supposed to do, within procedure, then QI keeps him from being sued for millions.
It makes the system that set up the procedure responsible instead – which is where the legal action ought to be aimed if the cop was doing what he had been ordered and trained to do.
You can still sue the city, or the PD, or Mohammad. You just can’t sue the poor schmoe doing the job we hired him to do.
@NK: I don’t deny that stopping the rioting is priority #1, but apparently we won’t be succeeding at that soon enough. The state apparatus has been making it politically very difficult for the President to send in the army, so we’re still in a situation where each Governor has to make up their damned minds about what to do. In the meantime, some of us do have to plan for a post-riot future, and I do think there will be a future, and a bright one too given that the Democrats are currently unable to stop themselves from self-destructing (yes, and much else along the way, but not everything).
@bobby b: In practice qualified immunity == you have ZERO recourse to the courts in the face of malicious prosecutors and LEOs. That has to stop. The way it stops can be that we keep QI but otherwise make it much easier to hold malicious prosecutors accountable, both in getting them fired, sanctioning in other ways they care about, or criminally sanctioning them when they far beyond the pale. Mike Nifong, I’m looking at you. Also Mueller and the whole General Flynn fiasco. Nifong did one day in jail and lost his job in a case where he should have served many years in jail. I’m still absolutely disgusted over that case, and the fact is that prosecutors fear nothing and that is not good for the Republic.
Nico:
I strongly agree with most of what you say, except that Qualified Immunity really doesn’t factor into any of it.
Nifong went to jail and lost his lawyer license. QI didn’t help him at all. Yeah, I agree he ought to be there still, but he’s not because of other problems.
Flynn’s persecutors have likely violated criminal law, and so QI won’t be a factor there. To the extent that they might be sued in civil court, what they did – falsifying evidence, hiding exculpatory evidence, lying to judges – these are all violations of “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” QI won’t help them there either.
The main unspoken purpose of QI is to shut down the progressive plan of paralyzing systems that they cannot politically change by making the individual actors and employees so fearful of personal lawsuits that they no longer carry out their part in the systems that the progressives hate.
I have a lot of trouble with the way that QI is being applied these days. Too expansive. But the concept is good, and it ought to be tuned, not dumped.
@bobby b: Hmm, well, that’s fair. Lawfare itself is a problem. But somehow we need more accountability, and not of the form “hey, I’m accountable” claims.
The transcript of officer Lane’s bodycam has come into the public domain. The officer is the one who went in the ambulance with Floyd and assisted in giving CPR, so we get the ambulance discussion too. The 25 pages can be read here. Without video, it is hard to judge elapsed time and etc.
FWIW, some points I extracted on first reading were:
– Floyd was out of it, irrational from the start. His very odd behaviour repeatedly alarmed police. His behaviour is ‘resisting arrest’ (maybe drug irrationality, maybe attempt to discard pipe weed concealed from police, my guess is both) but there appears to be little or no actual violence.
– The frequent “I’m claustrophobic” remarks and requests to “crack (open) car window” and similar may show that Floyd was experiencing some kind of respiratory issue early, and it was alarming him, but in a confused way given his drug-state. Floyd is already complaining explicitly of his breathing before he is on the ground IIUC.
– After trying to put him in the car, the police realise Floyd is on something serious / having an episode. The decisions to give up trying to put him in the car, to summon an ambulance and to put him on the ground are made at the same time. Ambulance first understands report as “bleeding from mouth” (Floyd was, as can be seen on public domain video, and fact is mentioned in radio summons to ambulance). Later discussion in ambulance shows this was (mis)understood as “mouth injury” (i.e. not so urgent) and only a minute or two later (conversation between Chauvin and Lane, re latter giving directions to ambulance) was this realised by police and its urgency upped (my summary/interpretation of confused details).
– As Floyd’s explicit breathing concerns continue, Chauvin tells Floyd to “stop talking and yelling – it takes a lot of oxygen to talk”.
– Later, Lane and Shawanda (woman in car with Floyd, describes herself as Floyd’s ex) both say at much the same time, “I think he’s passing out.” (Seems like this, and quite a few other remarks, were not picked up by the most widely touted of the public domain videos, which can virtually only see Chauvin and the officer who is watching the crowd. I’d guess it occurs at or soon after 4 minutes into that video.)
– Later, both Lane and officer Kueng say, “He’s still breathing” (possibly in response to a claim from someone on the sidewalk).
– Later, officer Kueng reports he can’t find a pulse (again, possibly in response to someone on the sidewalk). His actual word is “couldn’t” find a pulse.
– At the end, in the ambulance, officer Lane helps give CPR to Floyd and summarises his understanding of the incident.
Some take-aways from this additional (to the public domain) evidence:
a) It seems absurd to argue the police had any thought of intentionally ending Floyd’s life.
b) ‘Excited delirium’ is (very briefly) mentioned as (IIUC) something that could happen, thus as a reason to keep Floyd restrained (not as something that is or has already happened, at least in the sense that Floyd’s behaviour matches the initial behaviour of the client bobby b talked to in the example he describes, but did not became like the terrifying end of that). I conjecture Lane wondered if the alternative he suggested (rolling Floyd on his side) might make it easier for Floyd to breathe, but Lane’s response when Chauvin says to leave as is – Lane is the one who says he’s concerned about ‘Excited Delirium’ – could suggest he was very much in two minds about his own suggestion (of course, none of these policemen thought their brief incident remarks would be picked over so).
One is left with three questions:
1) Would putting Floyd on his side when Lane suggested it (or on his front and attempting by-hand CPR later, after he passed out, so earlier than when the ambulance arrived) have saved Floyd’s life? (My take FWIW: unlikely, though not impossible.)
2) Was the panicking drug-state Floyd a candidate for Excited Delirium? (My take FWIW: a candidate yes, but far from a certainty.)
3) Would it have made a difference to the narrative if the police had switched from (2) to (1) when Lane suggested it? (My take FWIW: no difference to its BLM pushers, given their behaviour over Zimmerman, ‘Hands-up! Don’t Shoot!’ and the like, but possibly some to the degree of wider take-up.)
YMMV
For completeness, I link these two articles from the US Spectator which, with some repetition, describe how closely the police behaviour mirrored the Minnesota training on safe Excited Delirium restraint, and that Floyd had three times the minimum lethal does of fentanyl, with other relevant details.