Stop Buying Into 'Official' Statements
Derek Chauvin's murder of George Floyd was first covered-up by the Minneapolis Police Department
They’re trained to lie. They’re pressured to lie by their departments and colleagues.
When some refuse to do it, they get ostracized and have their careers ruined (link), just like those officers who attempt to stop their colleagues from brutalizing civilians.
After they murdered George Floyd, here’s what the Minneapolis Police Department told us happened:
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May 25, 2020 (MINNEAPOLIS) On Monday evening, shortly after 8:00pm, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department responded to the 3700 block of Chicago Avenue South on a report of a forgery in progress. Officers were advised that the suspect was sitting on top of a blue car and appeared to be under the influence.
Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40’s, in his car. He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to the Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.
At no time were weapons of any type used by anyone involved in this incident.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has been called in to investigate this incident at the request of the Minneapolis Police Department.
No officers were injured in the incident.
Body worn cameras were on and activated during this incident.
The GO number associated with this case is 20-140629.
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As we all came to see once video recorded by a courageous teenaged girl went viral, the above “official” police description of the events that evening bore no resemblance to the truth. They lied.
Here’s what actually happened, and what a jury of his peers have now agreed took place that day:
On-duty police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.
That’s it. Police murdered George Floyd, then lied about it to try and stay out of trouble.
Before video footage was released of his murder at the hands of the Chicago Police Department, the department and city government said that 13-year-old Adam Toledo died in an “armed confrontation” with police.
The Chicago Police Department said that Adam had a gun in his hand when he turned around and faced the officer that had been pursuing him. Pliant local and national outlets and journalists uncritically spread those claims, some of them – CNN included – even getting their own “experts” to look at the footage and tell us that they saw with their own eyes that Adam had a gun in his hands when he faced a police officer and was subsequently killed.
Then, we all saw the video for ourselves and realized what really happened.
Adam Toledo had no weapons in his hands as he raised them and turned to face and surrender to a police officer in order to obey the officer’s orders. As Adam obeyed the officer’s orders, the officer then shot and killed the child.
They lied. They all – Police, other Chicago officials, the national media – lied.
The “official” Chicago Police Department statements were lies. The “official” Chicago city government statements were lies.
Far too many “official” and “expert” accounts from media outlets were lies.
Police lie, intentionally and systematically. Lying is an important part of police officers’ jobs, from reports to interrogating suspects.
Yet, corporate journalists are trained to take their words as “official,” with the implication that the designation lends some credibility and authority to their statements. Typically, police have their claims centered in media coverage of crime, generally, and in incidents of their killing civilians specifically.
This allows all pertinent issues to be framed by the very points of the systemic spear that routinely kills civilians without trial on our streets, and that also imprisons more people than any other nation on earth – in total and as a percentage of population – disproportionately poor, Black, and Brown.
So-called “official” statements come from those in power. Those in power do not have a vested interested in revealing the truth, only in hanging onto power.
For that reason, those in power have never shown us that we should trust them. When you break it down at this fundamental level, viewing police and their departments not as superheroes who prevent crime (they don’t) or bring justice (ditto) to normal, vulnerable people but rather as middle-management enforcers of our private property-based legal system in protection of capital and those who own it, it’s easy to understand.
Normal people don’t trust the powerful. We all know they don’t have our interests at heart.
Sadly, this includes police departments and corporate-owned media outlets. Victors and the courtier-style historians who love to lionize them write history, journalism is history’s first draft, and when it comes to matters of crime, journalists all too often allow the perpetrators of state-violence to write their own first-drafts.
That incestuous, undemocratic cycle has nothing to do with pursuing and disseminating truth. It’s also not a cycle that is likely to end.
That does not mean, however, that we have to continue accepting it.
The right wing response to this has been grotesque, to say the least. If this isn't enough to convince them otherwise, I don't know what is.