In case you didn’t see the entire video of that awful execution in Minneapolis, I urge you to force yourself to watch it.
Bear witness:
The four officers involved have been fired. The mayor is requesting that the DA indict the officer who ground his knee into Floyd’s neck, even continuing for four minutes after the man was clearly unconscious.
The Minneapolis police responded by attacking protesters who gathered last night:
Minneapolis police used tear gas and reportedly rubber bullets against protesters Tuesday evening as demonstrators gathered and marched in memory of and demanding justice for George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died in police custody Monday shortly after officers pinned him to the ground by the neck.
Apparently, the cops came loaded for bear and escalated quickly. If you didn’t know better you’d think they were upset about their four brothers being fired and decided to exact some punishment:
Amanda Marcotte has more at Salon:
[P]olice in these situations didn’t show up in full riot gear. They didn’t shoot tear gas at anyone. When protesters pounded on the doors and got right in cops’ faces, officers just stood there stoically, unwilling to do harm to these particular citizens, who were almost all white and big fans of Donald Trump.
No doubt liberals are in danger of letting conservatives drag them into a nitpicky, line-by-line debate over what constitutes “peaceful protest” and who started what in Minneapolis. But there’s no reason to get into that.
The bigger picture is clear: The police showed up in Minneapolis looking for a fight and were ready to use even the slimmest excuses in order to unleash violence on protesters who weren’t armed and didn’t injure anyone. (And some of whom were literally children.) But in Ohio and Michigan and other places, anti-lockdown protesters literally showed up to threaten politicians with an implicit message of violence by performing their paramilitary cosplay — and police did nothing.
And this is the real point, with which I totally agree:
To be clear, I’m glad the police didn’t do anything to the jackasses who showed up to protest the lockdowns. I’m against gratuitous police violence being inflicted on anyone. What’s relevant here is that the police reaction to the Trumpist protesters proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that law enforcement officials are being dishonest when they claim they need to bring down the hammer of violence on Black Lives Matter protesters. If cops can stand by calmly while men with guns scream in their faces, they sure as hell don’t have to tear-gas a crowd of peaceful protesters just because somebody broke a window.
Exactly.
And keep in mind that the gun-toting miscreants whining about government authority were insisting their right to get a haircut was more important than protecting the lives of their fellow Americans who were dying by the tens of thousands from an unprecedented deadly pandemic.
In Minneapolis, those who came out into the streets were protesting the summary execution of a man in the middle of the street by an agent of the state.
You tell me which citizens are the true patriots who are protecting our liberty in all this.
You tell me which ones are truly “pro-life.”