Hang on. This is gonna get rough.
I'll respond to specific points made by Ben Shapiro, but I want to point out that this dude has a history of making bad arguments in defense of pretty much whatever he wants, and that's usually a right-wing slant. That doesn't make him wrong by default, but it puts his credibility into question right from the outset. Okay, here we go.
First, Shapiro claims that Floyd was shouting "I can't breathe!" before being pinned by several officers on the ground. He claims that this exonerates the officers...except it doesn't. Either George Floyd was lying when he said that, and panicking (listen to that clip, he sounds pretty freaked out to me), or he was telling the truth, in which case officers had absolutely no business cuffing him and then putting him prone on a hard surface, subsequently squashing him against the pavement for roughly nine minutes. Either way, it doesn't actually touch what Shauvin and other officers did. It merely points out that Floyd may have been lying/panicking/freaking out before being pinned. And I hope I also don't have to explain that even if Mr. Floyd may have been fully capable of breathing when he said he wasn't while in the squad car, his later repetition of the same statement isn't false by default. Next!
Ben Shapiro attempts to say that there are multiple camera angles, and that one of them shows Mr. Shauvin's knee on Floyd's back or shoulder at times. Even if this is factual, it doesn't matter. There's another officer pinning his lower back and another pinning his legs. Floyd has absolutely no leverage. His arms are being yanked up behind him. No matter where Shauvin's knee is, these officers are conspiring to vastly constrict Mr. Floyd's chest. You know, for someone who was previously claiming he couldn't breathe, this actually makes the case against the officers worse, not better. You do not need to kneel on someone's neck to essentially shut down their ability to breather. Dr. Tobin, an expert witness for the prosecution, explains the mechanics of how we breathe. Test it yourself by putting one hand on your breastbone and the other on the side of your ribcage under your arm while breathing. You will feel two types of motion, which he refers to as "pump-handle" and "bucket-handle". By pinning George Floyd in the manner that they did, the officers were making it very difficult for Floyd to breathe.
And before you try the "he was yelling, and if you can yell you can breathe" argument, I want to point out that that logic is extremely dangerous. You can be low on oxygen while still being able to snatch shallow breaths, and while still being able to gasp and cry out...which is exactly where Floyd found himself.
I don't need to watch any more of that video, because Mr. Shapiro did exactly what I expected him to do. None of these arguments are any good. None of them have made much of a dent in any serious legal scholar's adjudication of this case. Now, I invite you to follow the bouncing ball of logic.
1. George Floyd was arrested for trying to buy cigarettes with a fake twenty-dollar bill. Just remember that in the back of your mind. Officers did all of this for twenty fucking dollars of counterfeit money. Floyd didn't draw a gun. He hadn't hurt anyone. He hadn't even threatened anyone. He was high, and he tried to pass off a fake bill. That's a crime, sure, but it doesn't merit death.
2. Officers are trained in the appropriate use of force, including where that force may and may not be applied when extenuating circumstances are present. They are, in essence, taught to use only as much force as is needed to ensure that a suspect is not a danger to themselves or to others.
3. If you handcuff someone's arms behind their back and seat them on the ground while watching over them, it is fairly difficult for that suspect to actually harm anyone. The worst they might try to do is get up...but try this as an experiment (there are gonna be a few of these, so work with me here). Sit on the floor in your living space, far enough away from any wall or furniture that you can't touch it. Put your hands behind your back so that your wrists are close together. Now try to get to your feet. You'll probably manage it, but how long did it take you? And do you think an officer standing by, someone in decent physical health, would be able to put you right back down again without effort? Yup, thought so. Let's keep going.
4. Given the relative lack of severity of Floyd's crime, he should have been handcuffed and seated in the squad car or, if that wasn't palatable to him (since he claimed he was claustrophobic), seated on the ground. This would constitute an appropriate level of force commensurate with the situation.
5. George Floyd was very agitated during the arrest, claiming he couldn't breathe and pleading over and over again with officers not to lock him up. This is indicative of two things. First, Mr. Floyd's mental state may have been impacted by substances he had taken. Second, Mr. Floyd, realizing that he was a black man in the hands of law enforcement, may have honestly felt that he had reason to be frightened for his life, which caused him to panic. Neither of these factors represents a clear and present danger to anyone -- Not Floyd, not bystanders, not the officerd, and cannot be used as an excuse for what came next.
6. Officers placed Floyd on the pavement on his stomach, wrenched his hands up behind him, then pinned his body at the shoulders, back and legs. The person pinning his upper body at several points had a knee on Floyd's neck; even if that knee was not always compressing the neck itself, it was still busy compressing Floyd's chest. Expert testimony suggests, however, that Shauvin's knee was on Floyd's neck up to ninety percent of the time. This represents an excessive use of force which, under the circumstances, all officers present had strong reason to believe was unacceptable.
7. Officers refused to reposition Mr. Floyd even while bystanders and one officer suggested placing him on his side so that he could breathe. Even if you tried to argue that everything up till this point might make some twisted, warped sort of sense in a world where the aim is to be as forceful as possible to disable a suspect - yes, even a suspect whose only crime in this instance was the use of a phony twenty - Shauvin's choice to maintain position atop Mr. Floyd represents a deliberate choice to maintain an action which was directly and demonstrably impacting his suspect's ability to breathe.
8. Another experiment for you. If you live alone, or do not live with someone you trust, try putting yourself face-down on the floor with your hands tight behind your back. Note: if you have breathing difficulties or other medical conditions which might be impacted by trying this, absolutely DO NOT DO THIS! I have tested this for myself. Lying on your stomach is pretty easy if your arms are at your sides and/or you can shift a little, but if you're lying flat on a hard surface with your chest, you might soon notice that your breath is shorter and you grow uncomfortable. This will be made worse if your arms are behind you, since belts of muscle in your chest walls and shoulders will tighten, causing your breath to shorten even further. Now, if you're safe to do this, take a moment to imagine someone resting two hundred pounds of their weight on your back, shoulders or neck, and someone else near your tailbone doing the same, and someone else on your legs, all the while your pinned, cuffed wrists are being pulled upward. If you're really, really brave and have someone you can trust with this, you can even simulate part of this for yourself. I haven't gone this far, but I know what I'll find, because I've been pinned this way in the past, albeit without actual handcuffs.
9. Now, once your experimentation is done - real-life or thought, it doesn't matter, but seriously, don't do anything stupid and don't take unnecessary risks - consider this. Mr. Shauvin knew, or should have known from his training, that George Floyd's breathing was going to be seriously impacted by his use of excessive force. He knew this for over nine minutes, but declined to change his behaviour. He has no plausible deniability here, and no defense at all that should exonerate him. Multiple law enforcement witnesses have stated that Shauvin's use of force did not follow procedure and is not approved. This was not just a heat-of-the-moment judgment call or a mistake. This was Mr. Shauvin using his power, his training and his position to literally compress Mr. Floyd's neck, shoulder, back and chest until he died.
Oh, and just to cut the fentanyl argument off at the pass:
Prosecution proved that George Floyd did not die of fentanyl overdose, since it is preceded by coma, and Floyd did not enter a coma before death. There was ample chances for Mr. Shauvin and other officers to react to George Floyd falling unconscious at around the five-minute mark; it might already have been too late, but they essentially went on kneeling on his unresponsive body for another four minutes just to be sure.
Now, go back and read this post again, please. Don't just skim for a point and try to strike. Take the whole thing in. Then come back and tell me that Ben Shapiro makes a good argument. I double-dog-dare you.
Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1