Tag Archives: Chauvin Trial

Ellison: “You Are All Victims!”

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Keith Ellison’s Attorney General’s Office is soliciting “victim impact statements”…

…from, literally, everybody.

Community impact statements are statements submitted by those who have been impacted by a crime. Those statements then may be read at the sentencing hearing.

On a form on Ellison’s website, people can submit their own community impact statement describing “how Mr. Chauvin’s offenses have had a social or economic impact” on their lives and community. When submitting, people must select whether they reside in Minneapolis, the state of Minnesota, the United States, or elsewhere.

“It is not common to facilitate the submission of community-impact statements in this way, but this is not a common case,” a spokesman for Ellison’s office told FOX 9.

Reading between the lines: the DFL has to keep the outrage stoked, since none of the other Democrat issues are polling well at all.

Who Needs A Highway, An Airport Or A Jet. . .

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. . . when you can’t buy a gallon of gas?

Drivers along parts of the East Coast piled into gas stations on Tuesday, resulting in long lines and shortages as motorists reacted to what could be a weeklong shutdown of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline because of a cyberattack.

Colonial Pipeline Co., operator of a 5,500-mile conduit for gasoline, diesel and refined products, said Monday it hoped to substantially restore service by the end of the week. It shut the pipeline late last week after a ransomware attack that U.S. officials have linked to a criminal gang known as DarkSide.

We haven’t seen gas lines too often in recent years. I remember those gas lines in the 70s. OPEC was at the height of its powers and while the cartel didn’t conduct ransomware attacks per se, the effect was about the same. It happened the first time in late ’73 and into ’74, right as Watergate was starting to gain traction, and then again in 1979, when many of my friends were getting their driver’s licenses. We were eager to start cruising the main drag, but gas was hard to find at times, limiting our early forays into car culture and adulthood.

In the middle of that summer (July 15, to be precise) Jimmy Carter gave his infamous “malaise” speech. While the chattering classes were supportive, Carter’s hangdog expression and mien sent an unmistakable message of weakness, which other players noticed. Weak politicians don’t prosper, so Carter blew up his career that evening.

A few days earlier, a Chicago disc jockey Steve Dahl had blown up a large box of disco records at Comiskey Park, starting a melee that tore up the field and causing the White Sox to forfeit the second game of a scheduled doubleheader. About a month later, members of the provisional IRA assassinated Lord Mountbatten, detonating a bomb on his boat while he was out sailing with members of his family. One way or another, it seemed like things were about to blow in that summer of ’79.

We’re more than forty years on. Tensions have been high lately, but it’s been calm since the jury came back against Derek Chauvin. It’s likely our current gas shortage will be temporary and may not directly affect the Upper Midwest at all. History does not necessarily repeat, but it’s easy to sense weakness in our leaders at all levels of government. Some have already noticed. Joe Biden was on the scene in 1979, so I’d like to believe he was paying attention. Summer’s coming. I hope it doesn’t blow.

 

Chum

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Andrew McCarthy writing at National Review says the Chauvin jury was correct to convict him, not based on anything reported in the media or introduced as evidence at trial or the pervasive atmosphere of intimidation, but because the conviction means Chauvin is a bad cop and that exonerates the rest of society from the charge of systemic racism. 

Sacrificing a victim to the mob is shameful.  Twisting your shameful act to pretend it’s all for the greater good is disgusting.  But I expect nothing less from a Never-Trumper. 

Joe Doakes

It’s the sort of rationalization I expect from someone who spent way too much time in the prosecution industry.

Urban Progressive Privilege: In Which I Defend A Cake-Eating Private School

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Around the time of the Chauvin verdict, and in the wake of the Brooklyn Center shooting, a group of students at posh Creti\-Derham Hall – a private Catholic school in Saint Paul – held a walkout.

Now, that’s fine. It’s a foreign concept to me, of course – in my day, at my high school, with its principal who’d served as a Marine fighter pilot in World War 2, it was pretty well understood a student’s place was in his damn desk. I honestly think both approaches have their merits.

Now, with Cretin-Derham Hall (henceforth CDH) which charges $14,765 a year in tuition (which, even after adjusting for inflation, is about 40% more than I spent for undergrad college at a private four-year institution), there’s the added imperative with one suspects at least a few parents, to spend more time on learning and less on the social-justice chatter one sees being substituted for “Education” in the public system.

They Doth Protest Too Much

So – was it OK for the students at CDH to walk out? That’s between the students, the faculty and the ATM machines. Er, parents.

What can not be considered OK is the alleged behavior by some of the students, as related in the Pioneer Press’s story on the subject (emphasis added by me):

As the group gathered back at the school, a student organizer used a school megaphone to lead an anti-police, “F— 12” chant, which administrators quickly sought to shut down.

Meanwhile, a group of girls recorded a video taunting a police officer’s son, who stayed home from school on Monday.

Students told the Pioneer Press that at least six students of various ethnicities were suspended.

Into the fray steps a woman – a “Chicano Studies” professor at the U of M, and not only a CDH graduate, but a second generation alum – with an open letter to CDH’s administration (and, of course, all the social media) with the social justice verdict on the subject. Here’s the letter – I’ll leave it to you to read it, if you want. I’ll pullquote it in case it disappears, not that the professor (who I won’t name, because why?) wijll face any consequences for writing it.

She repeats, several times, that she was a “student of color” at CDH -but also mentions that her father also graduated from CDH, that she’s gone onto an academic career including a PhD from UC Santa Barbara and a position at the U of M teaching in a discipline ending with “…Studies”, which I present with no further comment, other than to say that if she was oppressed (as she claims repeatedly in the letter, although generally in the form of “microaggressions”), it’s not apparent from her implied curriculum vitae. Not only did someone spend an awful lot of money to send her to school – implying at least one generation cared about her education pretty profoundly – but someone did the same for her father, somehow.

Failure To Communicate

Her letter is…

…well, about what you’d expect from someone who’s a professor of anything ending in “studies”. But there are a couple of bits that:

  • Show the parlous state of higher educations today
  • Given the amount of cheerleading support the professor got on social media, show the dismal state of logic in society today.

The first part:

Your call to understand “BOTH” sides, and that “we can be politically conservative or liberal or somewhere on the broad continuum of thought AND coexist in a respectful environment built on common values,” [Bold is original] fails to understand what is currently happening in our city, state, and nation. This is not a matter of hearing each other out. This is a matter of life and death. Black people are killed by police at alarming rates

Have you noticed how often sentences that says a statement “…fails to understand” something almost inevitably deflect someone’s perfect understanding of a situation?

And what actions, that the public knows about, crossed any sort of ideological line? The protests?

No. It was the six kids that allegedly bullied the cop’s kid.

While CDH wouldn’t specifically comment on the nature of the six suspensions, the school confirmed to me that no students were suspended for protesting legitimately. Who does thjat leave? There are only so many possibilities.

So – not only is she saying there are not multiple sides of this issue, and there is not room for multiple perspectives, but that if you think there are you clearly favor killing black people; accusing people of racism for supporting a dialog about issues is bad enough.

But she’s bringing that accusation to bear to support six alleged bullies. Criticizing, not the protests, but the bullying that sprang from them, is racist!

As Dennis Prager points out, it takes an elite education something something something. I forget thje rest.

Speaking of Consequences

Later, apparently criticizing the suspension of (I’ll say it again) six kids who made a video harassing someone for being the son of a policeman, she writes (and I add empjasis):

As educators we must impede the school to prison pipeline. Taking this type of disciplinary action as opposed to teaching, listening, and engaging with these young people is not only a missed opportunity, but continues the same punitive action that this present moment is fighting against.

The professor apparently would have you believe that suspending students at a posh private school for allegedly bullying a fellow student is:

  • Going on the students criminal records
  • On a moral par with not only being killed by the police, but killed for no cause whatsoever.

The galling part about this is not that someone who teaches our kids is writing this sort of stuff with a straight face. This sort of thought would appear to be the water in which PhDs in anything ending in “…Studies” swim.

The galling part was, when someone posted the letter on a neighborhood social media page, watching the locals – it was in Highland Park – tripping over each other to compliment the writer’s wisdom. And when questioned in any way, how many of them reverted immediately to…

Because Trump.

Moral vacuity is a barrel that has no bottom to scrape in Saint Paul.

Quick Note: Any commenter that asks “So, you’re ok withj black people being summarily executed” will be blocked, forever, and urged to go pay penance for being the moral plaque on societies arteries that you are.

Another Quick Note: “What, Berg – you’re a conservative, riffing on private schools? ”

No. I’m riffing on Cretin-Derham Hall. What the Ivies are to the nation, CDH is to Saint Paul, and I don’t entirely mean that in a good way. There’s a CDH. mafia ijn this town. Which makes the professor’s letter doubly ironic; if CDH grads are “oppressed” in the Twin CIties, it’s because they’ve worked hard to feel oppressed.

A Little Concerning

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One of the alternate jurors from the Chauvin trial admits the flamingly obvious (in an interview with KARE11’s Lou Raguse):

Raguse: Did you want to be a juror?

Christensen: I had mixed feelings. There was a question on the questionnaire about it and I put I did not know. The reason, at that time, was I did not know what the outcome was going to be, so I felt like either way you are going to disappoint one group or the other. I did not want to go through rioting and destruction again and I was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict.

So there’s your evidence that, by accident or design or pure social fact, the jury’s attitude was affected by the, er, social disruption of the past year.

I’m not going to say “It’d have been utterly impossible for Chauvin to get a fair trial under those circumstances”.

I’m going to say we can see that state from here.

Rumor Of War

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The Chauvin trial wrapped up yesterday. As this is written, the jury is deliberating.

But well into last week, Saint Paul was strapping in.

Holiday station, Hamline at Marshall. That’s some solid woodwork on those plywood window covers.

Saint Paul is smoking ’em if they got ’em.

Laundromat, University and Pascal. At least 2-3 other buildings east and west of here burned last May. The strip mall across the street was more or less looted out – allowing the property managers to sell to the owners of “Minnesota United”. The riots were indeed very good for Saint Paul’s plutocrats.

The Midway Menards hasn’t yet piled stacks of plywood in front of the store – which is the “smoke ’em if you got ’em” moment, from where I sit.

Some merchants are of the opinion that some kind of supplication to the crowd might buy them some grace.

I’m not going to say what the store is – and I’ll block anyone who tries, and it’ll be so permanent it’ll make “Dog Gone’s” exile look like Woody Kane’s sentence.. They’re a local, family-run business, and they were burned and looted, although not totaled out, last year. They’ve been warned to expect more of the same. Fingers crossed for all of them.

But most of the biggest victims last year were immigrants and merchants “of color”, and there’s no reason to expect the white left-wing college kids who did most of the burning last year are going to be any different this time around.

If some legislator wants to push a bill removing “duty to retreat” and allowing self-defense of felony-level destruction of property via lethal force, I’ll pound all the pavement they need.

Or, y’know, assert the rule of law:

Assert it equally, regardless of class, race or all the rest? Absolutely – suggest otherwise (or suggest I suggest otherwise) and you are depraved and need to be shunned.

But assert it, for chrissake.

This Is A Sincere Question…

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…for any DFLers that happen to be reading.

Yesterday, on the one hand, DFL rep Jennifer McEwen, sounding as if she were nearly in tearms, chided her GOP colleagues for attacking Maxine Waters, who spent her weekend telling Demcorats to riot if they didn’t get the verdict they wanted in the Chauvin trial…

Right after that, the DFL moved a resolution condemning the National Guard – part-time soldiers who live among us all – for supporting the effort to keep “Anti”-Fa from burning down. more poor, immigrant and minority neighborhoods:

Do these people speak for you?

And if you deflect to “January 6”, in the seeming belief that there was no pollitical violence in this country before that day, I will mock and taunt you for a month straight, and you will deserve it.

With Apologies To David Letterman (Back When He Was Funny)

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The Top Ten Things you Never, Ever Hear in Real Life.

10. “Hey, hand me that piano”.

9. “Gosh, the Star Tribune does a great job of balanced coverage on divisive issues”

8. “You know what I could use right now? A plate of “Scrod” from Embers”

7. “The fact that the Vikings, T-Wolves, Wild and usually the Twins disappoint me terribly is a sign that my priorities in life are terribliy out of whack”.

6. “See how much clearer and more fluid writing is when you arbitrarily and mindlessly adhere to the ‘Oxford Comma?'”

5. “The ‘zipper merge’ has made my life better”

4. “I got a call back from Alice Hausman’s office!”s

3. “That Mike McNeil on AM950 is appointment listening for me!”

2. “I always feel healthy and safe riding the Green Line after 6PM!”

And the #1 thing you never, ever hear in real life:

Number 1: “Oh, good. Al Sharpton is in town. Our racial divide and social crisis is going to get better”.

I’m No Lawyer

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As such, I have no idea if the City of Minneapolis is trying to find ways to throw the Chauvin trial, or to create grounds for endless appeals, each of them a potential spark for more riots and, of course, more springboards for more political grandstanding.

But if it were…:

Cahill’s decision followed a defense request to delay or move the trial in the wake of last week’s $27 million wrongful death settlement announced between Minneapolis and the family of George Floyd.

Chauvin’s attorneys argued that the massive settlement and the notoriety around it might taint the jury pool.

Cahill, who’s expressed his unhappiness over Minneapolis publicizing the settlement during jury selection for Chauvin’s criminal trial, acknowledged Friday that the high-profile nature of this case would be inescapable no matter if it were postponed or moved.

“I don’t think there’s any place in the state of Minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity on this case,“ Cahill told the court, explaining his decision to keep the trial in Minneapolis.

…I’d be at a loss for what they’d be doing differently.

Send In The Kangaroos

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City of Minneapolis reaches an independent settlment with the Floyd family…

…just in time to jeopardize the Chauvin trial.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called it a milestone. The city council unanimously approved the settlement.

Announcing the settlement in the middle of jury selection for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin confused legal experts.

“It was absolutely terrible timing, I would say for both sides,” said Mary Moriarty, the former chief public defender in Hennepin County.

Prospective jurors in the trial can still be questioned about their thoughts on the settlement, but Moriarty says no one knows how the news will affect the seven already seated.

“Most jurors I think would perceive [the settlement] as the city’s belief that Chauvin did murder George Floyd and that they are liable,” Moriarty said.

It’s assumed that it’d be very difficult to insulate any jury from hearing about the settlement.

Given the Minneapolis City Council’s performance over the past year, it’s hard to guess whether it was incompetence, malice or arrogance.

I say “Its the Minneapolis City Council. Why choose?”

Death Spiral

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Joe Soucheray on the Chauvin Trial and Minneapolis:

Yes, the trial, and the attendant protests, could be the end of Minneapolis. There is no political strength in place to save it. The council even exudes a vibe that suggests they are more concerned about the safety and convenience of protesters than their own citizenry.

The council cannot open an intersection because of their apparent fealty to those who occupy it. What are they going to do if rioters decide that they are going to take over six or seven square blocks of downtown, maybe the Nicollet Mall? This city let a police station burn. This is a city that called for help too late back in May 2020.

Minneapolis city council president Lisa Bender famously said that expecting public safety is a “privilege” – to which every taxpayer in that city should be saying “Yes. It Is. A ‘privilege’ I, whatever my race, creed or belief, pay through the nose for. Now provide it, stat, or get out of office and quite wasting our time”.

But they don’t ,and they won’t, and when Lisa Bender leaves the Council she, like Frey and even Alondra Cano, will be replaced by someone worse. That’s cynicism talking – well, not just cynicism. It’s the way Minneapolis politics is set up. It’s the way politics go wherever a small minority, committed to getting power at whatever cost, get their way. It’s the apotheosis of Urban Progressive Privilege.

Not even a complete apocalypse is going to change that.

Digging In

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A friend of the blog emails:

As you can see you today more fencing and wire went up around the 4th Precinct in North Minneapolis.

Many traffic barriers are also set internal inside the fence in the police parking lot.

So where will all the rioters go?

It’s a rhetorical question.

UPDATE: Compare and contrast with when this shot was first taken, a couple weeks ago:

Currying Favor

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Here’s the team of lawyers volunteering their time to prosecute a Minneapolis police officer in the biggest racial lynching the city has ever seen. 

They must all be gunning for judge, hoping to impress Tim Walz with their sterling Liberal credentials so he appoints them to the bench.  Thank God I don’t live in Hennepin County.

Joe Doakes

Same. Although let’s not pretend for a moment that if this had happened in Saint Paul, the Ramco Attorney’s office wouldn’t be just as bad.

The Darkness Before More, Darker Darkness

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The news is full of stories about the preparations for Monday’s opening of the Derek Chauvin trial.

Signally, all those preparations seem to involve fortifying government buildings.

That includes Minneapolis City Hall, where taxpayers are paying a lot of money to fortify a building wherein most of the City Council members believe the expectation of public safety is a privilege.

As to protecting the small businesspeople? Residents?

Additionally, Sasha Cotton, the director for the city’s new Office of Violence Prevention, said her department is working with the city’s Neighborhood and Community Relations Department on a preparedness toolkit—which includes safety tips and best practices, among other information—to help neighborhoods and residents.

A “preparedness kit”.

In other words, smoke ’em if you got ’em. You’re on your own.

Again. Government has its priorities. Government is government’s priority.

But it’s OK – because city officials are pointing out the precedent they’re concerned about.

January 6.

Not May 25.

“Never Waste a Crisis!”

A city’s agony is just another excuse to feed into the blood libel that there is a massive wave of “white supremacist right wing violence that’ll dwarf 9/11” waiting out there, any day now.

Checklist

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As Minneapolis heads towards what is almost certain to be a metaphorical and fiscal bloodletting, if not perhaps a literal one, the city is going through its crisis preparedness checklist:

  1. After nearly a year of calling public safety a privilege, erecting lots and lots of privilege around itself.
  2. Continue not only proving that public safety is a “privilege” in Minneapolis, but continue contributing financially to keeping it that way.
  3. Keep on gaslighting the proles. Er, taxpayers. Same/same.
  4. Transferring more wealth to adjunct members of the political class.
  5. Focusing on politically correct irrelevancies – perhaps to earn carbon credits for all the smoke the city expects to see generated.
  6. Ponder turning downtown into a social justice park and business-free zone.
  7. Keep letting Keith Ellison try, and fail, to pretend he’s a prosecutor, rather than the anti-market version of a personal injury attorney?
  8. Start reading up on life in Grozny, Baghdad, Beirut and Detroit.

You’re in the best of hands, Minneapolis.

Plans

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A friend of the blog emails:

The people of Portland and Seattle might get a break seeing so many will be in Minneapolis.

Super Bowl, Basketball Final Four, and Chauvin trial, come to Minneapolis.

We used to call them “professional protesters”. And they most certainly do exist.

But I think we also have a class of “riot tourists”.

And it looks like the Twin CIties are a destination.

The Darkness Before The Darkness

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A longtime friend of the blog emails:

With the impending Derek Chauvin trial, the fortification of the 4th Precinct has begun this morning.

A wall of cement traffic barricades are being set around the perimeter. Back last summer it was reinforced with razor wire.

I am so deeply saddened by what has happened to my city.

Sad. And disgusted.

Kevin Williamson was right. This isn’t decay. This is municipal suicide.

Bombshell

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On May 31, prosecutors learned Floyd died of an overdose. On August 25, they admitted it in court.

Charges against the officers still have not been dismissed. One remains in jail, in super-max prison, in Oak Park Heights. 

I seem to recall someone in the comments lecturing me on the ethical duties of a prosecutor as explanation why he was confident the state would win a conviction.  Yeah?  Not when your own medical examiner concedes it was an overdose. 

I’m ready for my apology.  I bet Chauvin is, too.  I wonder if the Lawyer’s Board of Professional Responsibility is taking complaints in person these days, or on-line only.  Because sitting on exculpatory evidence for three months, publicly branding a man you know to be innocent as a murder, encouraging people to riot to protest a crime that never occured . . . those acts seem to violate the Rules of Professional Conduct, particularly Rules 3.8 (a), (d) and (f).

Joe Doakes

Part of my enduring pessimism about politics in Minnesota is that, between the media, the irregularities in the election system, and the mass of brainwashed droogs that would vote DFL if Josef Mengele came back from the dead and got the DFL endorsement by standing on his head while chanting “Black Cadavers Matter” and give him 70% of the vote anyway, is that accountability – at least, the accountability not manifested by people voting with their feet – always evades them.

If it doesn’t happen soon – in some form other than “Minneapolis turning into a cold Flint” – I’m not sure that it’ll matter anymore.

Shot In The Dark: Today’s News, Months Ago

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Someone in the press leaked the body cam video of the George Floyd arrest. Taking nothing away from the tragedy or the anger that went along with it – “knee on the throat” isn’t a good look – but seeing this, I’m thinking Keith Ellison would need Vasily Ulrikh on the bench to get a Murder conviction.

I have little to add, except that this piece from two months ago is looking better and better.

Oh, yeah – strap in. Officer Chauvin will be acquitted of “Unintentional Second Degree Murder”, and the other three will get away with lesser included charges. It’s going to make the last week in May look like a kindergarten full of kids who broke into the Koolaid.

Rounds Two And…Three?

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Like a lot of Twin Cities residents, I’m eyeing next spring – sometime after the scheduled March opening of the Derek Chauvin trial – nervously, remembering that the LA riots (at least the ones everyone remembers) began not with the pummeling of Rodney King, but with the acquittal of the four officers involved.

And here’s a fearless prediction (one I’ve already made): Chauvin will be acquitted of Second Degree Unintentional Murder – not because of any legal cop-fu, but because while I’m not a lawyer, I don’t think you need to be a lawyer to see why it’s going to be very hard to show that Chauvin was – check the emphasis, taken from the statute for 2nd Degree Unintentional Murder…:

(1) causes the death of a human being, without intent to effect the death of any person, while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense other than criminal sexual conduct in the first or second degree with force or violence or a drive-by shooting; or

Is a cop responding to a call “the commission of a felony?” I can see Alondra Cano believing that – but Ellison? Someone who’s ostensibly been to law school?

Unless there’s some bodacious lawyer-fu in store, or the Attorney General’s office plans on tampering with the entire witness pool, I’m just not seeing it.

But does the concept of qualified immunity mean there could be yet a third adverse verdict for George Floyd’s supporters and the Twin CIties’ far left’s many professional and amateur hooligans?

Was it “clearly established” on May 25 that kneeling on a prone, handcuffed arrestee’s neck for nearly nine minutes violated his Fourth Amendment rights? The issue is surprisingly unsettled in the 8th Circuit, which includes Minnesota.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit blocked civil rights claims in two recent cases with broadly similar facts: handcuffed detainees who died after being restrained face down by several officers. Unlike those detainees, Floyd was not actively resisting at the time of his death, except to repeatedly complain that he could not breathe.

While that distinction could make a difference in the constitutional analysis, we can’t be sure. Even if the 8th Circuit concluded that Chauvin’s actions were unconstitutional, it could still decide the law on that point was not clear enough at the time of Floyd’s arrest, meaning Chauvin would receive qualified immunity.

The 8th Circuit could even reach the latter conclusion without resolving the constitutional question, as courts have commonly done since 2009, when the Supreme Court began allowing that shortcut. To defeat qualified immunity in this case, says UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz, a leading critic of the doctrine, Floyd’s family “would have to find cases in which earlier defendants were found to have violated the law in precisely the same way.”

The whole piece is worth a read – and the whole concept of seriously reforming qualified immunity is something conservatives need to take an enlightened lead on.

Because it’s for damn sure the other side won’t.

I’m No Lawyer…

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…and I’ll leave plenty of room for those of you who are.

But as re Keith Ellison taking over the prosecution of the officers involved in the George Floyd case, I can’t help but think the following:

Hot Potato: Mike Freeman just got the most controversial case in his misbegotten career off his plate. He can’t help but be relieved to get this “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” monstrosity off his docket.

Priorities For starters, Ellison’s not trying the case personally – the head of his trials division is.

On the other hand, the MN Attorney General’s office, under a fifty-year-long series of DFL occupants (Ellison, Lori Swanson, Mike Hatch, Skip Humphrey and Warren Spannaus), has basically turned into a Better Business Bureau with guns, and a 1-800-ASK-GARY for political non-profits looking to harass businesses into compliance with their pet policies. I’m not gonna say the MNAGO doesnt have the expertise to prosecute a shoplifter caught on camera – but it’s not exactly been their front foot for the last, oh, couple generations or so.

I’m gonna guess the state’ll be paying a lot for “consultants” on this case.

A Charge Or Two Too Far: So let’s take a look – via my admittedly non-lawyer perspective – at the three charges. I’ll add emphasis to what I – again, a non-lawyer – think the “beef” is.

Murder in the Second Degree:

Whoever does either of the following is guilty of murder in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 40 years:

(1) causes the death of a human being with intent to effect the death of that person or another, but without premeditation

[(2) relates to drive-by shootings – clearly not applicable]

Subd. 2. Unintentional Murders. Whoever does either of the following is guilty of unintentional murder in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 40 years:

(1) causes the death of a human being, without intent to effect the death of any person, while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense other than criminal sexual conduct in the first or second degree with force or violence or a drive-by shooting; or
[(2) relates to killing people who’ve taken out restraining orders]

Now, let’s look at Murder in the Third Degree

(a) Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years.

[(b) relates to selling drugs to someone who dies of an overdose – not applicable here – Ed]

Here’s Manslaughter in the Second Degree.

 A person who causes the death of another by any of the following means is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both:

(1) by the person’s culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another; or [several sections related to actions that don’t apply – the statute is linked, holler if you disagree – Ed]

So – knowing what we know now, what do you think is going to fly beyond a reasonable doubt?

That:

  1. The officers intended to kill Floyd while committing a felony offense – which would involve proving that “doing their jobs” was a felony? Or
  2. Unintentionally killed Floyd while committing an eminently dangerous act? You could say kneeling on someone’s neck might be eminently dangerous, and I might agree 100%, but qualified immunity – the doctrine that if one government employee gets away with something, they all get away with it – and the tactic is not completely outlandish, if discouraged, in police circles, might be a problem, here.
  3. The officers were culpably negligent and created an unreasonable (i.e., would fail to convince a jiury) risk.

The usual caveats apply: case law colors how statues are applied, and I’m not a lawyer.

But given that it appears to this non-lawyer that charging Chauvin with Second Degree murder was a) done to placate the crowd and b) find charges for the other three officers and c) looks like a very long shot, I have to wonder if they aren’t banking on, in effect, making a political statement and not bothering with justice.

Politics First: Being entirely a puppet of “progressives” with deep pockets, you knew Ellison was going to have to bump up the charges to…well, whatever he could get away with. The party he answers to needs to have a ritual stoning, or some other red meat to throw its constituents and, ideally, beat Republicans over the head with in the fall…

…without actually having negative consequences for the November elections.

Ellison, himself as graceful and fluid in his deflections as a German jazz band, telegraphed this during his initial presser, saying a trial would take “months”. Meaning – it’ll stay in the realm of political mud-throwing until after November, giving the DFL PR machine plenty of time to repair damage from the inevitable disturbances that erupt after Chauvin is acquitted for Second Degree murder (and, I can’t help but think, delaying that verdict until the depth of a Minnesota winter, deterring a lot of rioting).

The Fifth Killer

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Police and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) deal with a lot of people in crisis – including various medical crises, exacerbated or caused by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, or physical pathologies.

Combining the stress of a contact with police, the medical episode and other contributing factors can cause all sorts of problems, some of them potentially fatal:

  • Excited Delirium – a physical condition involving, essentially, the brain and body speeding out of control. It sounds fun – I thought I was in an excited delirium when I met the Bangles. But no, it’s deadly serious.
  • Positional Asphyxia – where someone is in, or is being restrained in, a position where they can’t breathe – frequently because their chest is constrained from moving. When combined with the other effects of high stress, the blood becomes “acidotic“, which can quickly lead to cardiac arrest.

A standard method of dealing with Excited Delirium and Positional Asphyxia, while detaining and maintaining physical control over someone, is to turn them on their side. It’s easy enough, relatively, to maintain physical control – but their chest can expand, their diaphragm can expand and contract the lungs which, with someone in crisis, helps bring down the blood acids that lead to Acidosis, lowering the risk of cardiac arrest.

Or at least, that was what the Minneapolis Police Department was taught by Hennepin EMS, the paramedic service for Hennepin County, which helped train Minneapolis cops in basic first aid and other medical techniques used to stabilize people in crisis, even when they needed to be detained an controlled.

And for cases where more intervention is needed, some paramedics use a drug called ketamine. it’s a sedative, used in operating rooms for starting general anaesthesia – but it works just fine for sedating someone in a crisis, letting them breathe and recover while de-stressing, physically as well as mentally. Hennepin EMS was the first paramedic agency in the country to use Ketamin to sedate people in medical emergencied, along with about a third of all EMS agencies in the US. It’s a “very safe drug that works quicker [in his experience] than anything else”, says my source.

But – says my source – the article, the inevitable raft of subsequent lawsuits and regulatory investigations resulted, in my source’s words, in some EMS medics “…being spooked. As an agency, we were less likely to administer optimal treatments.”

It’s also a component in some “date rape” drugs – which we’ll come back to.

Hennepin EMS trained Minneapolis cops – and used Ketamine to de-escalate medical crises.

That is, until just about two years ago.

That’s when a story came out in the Star Tribune, by Andy Mannix, entitled “At urging of Minneapolis police, Hennepin EMS workers subdued dozens with a powerful sedative“.

A source formerly located in Hennepin EMS, speaking on condition of anonymity, tells me the Mannix article got pretty much every substantive fact about the use of Ketamine wrong (“He spelled Hennepin right”, my source quipped).

But the damage was…well, not done. It began. Minneapolis broke its training arrangement with Hennepin EMS, and stopped the use of ketamine.

Breathing: Fast forward to Memorial Day, 2020, and the infamous encounter outside Cup Foods in South Minneaoplis.

The New York Times put together what my source calls an excellent video on the killing – including some camera angles and audio I hadn’t encountered before. My source says the Times did an “outstanding job”.

It’s distressing, but worth a watch.

And as you do, notice – Floyd was clearly having a medical emergency. He was a big guy, so having his wrists cuffed already restricted his breathing. His claustrophobia was self-stated – but as a 6’5 guy (Floyd was 6’6) the thought of being wedged into one of those passive-aggressively cramped little police cruisers makes me a little panicky all by itself. Stress on top of medical crisis – strikes one and two.

And then officers Chauvin and Moua arrived, pulled Lloyd out of the back of the car, and commenced kneeling on his neck and back – seriously impairing his breathing.

Some wannabe social media doctors have missed the point, borrowing lessons from Heimlich Maneuver training and claiming that since Floyd could say “I can’t breathe”, he could breathe.

But, my source relates, it wouldn’t matter, if the killer symptom – acidosis, which Floyd was unable to ventilate – was leading to a cardiac arrest.

One of the officers figured it out, asking Officer Chauvin if they might roll Floyd onto his side – which Chauvin rejected, keeping Floyd under his knee until EMS arrived.

By which point Floyd was well past mere “crisis” – unresponsive, apparently acidotic, sliding toward the cardiac arrest that was reported by the EMS when they reached 36th and Park – mere blocks from Cup Foods.

Did a sloppy news story and a subsequent frenzy of litigation and regulation take a vital tool out of paramedics’ toolkits? One that might have prevented George Floyd’s death, and the orgy of misery that it led to?

Unpacking The Invisible NPR Tote Bag

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“White Privilege” has been all over the news this last couple of years.

 It’s been there because the Big Left has ordained that it should be.  My theory;  in a nation full of “privilege” – class, racial, academic, social and, let’s be honest, the privilege of being born here rather than Russia or Nigeria or Burma – Big Left needed to focus on racial, “white” privilege to whip up black votes for Hillary Clinton, a geriatric white plutocrat.  As a result, all discussion of other “privilege” is off the table.

Terms, Terms, Everywhere Are Terms: White privilege exists, of course.  It goes hand in hand with the idea of “we-ism” – the idea that everyone on earth is more comfortable around, and accomodating of, people more like them than less.

Beyond that?  In my more sardonic and less cautious days, I defined it as being a descendant of a society from a harsh, lethally inhospitable place that had zero words for “hakuna matata” but more words for “stab him!” than Eskimos have for “snow”; a dour, patriarchal warrior culture that killed everyone that had designs on enslaving them.  As a result, my culture has no commonly-held concept of being enslaved.  We  operate from the standpoint of people who’ve been free (or at least subjects of generally benign monarchs) as far back as our cultural memory goes.  On behalf of all my cultural cousins, I am sorry for those of you who are descended from matriarchal hunter gatherer societies that couldn’t effectively resist the slave merchants, but I can’t change history any more than you can.  Just the present – a present I and my cultural cousins have been trying to change for 240-odd years, now.

More soberly, and after interviewing a representative of Black Lives Matter on my show, I arrived at the idea that “white privilege” is the ability to walk into a room and not have everyone wondering if you’re “one of the good ones”.   It was a little after that that I first encountered the academic paper in which the term “white privilege” was coined, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.   It supplied fifty definitions of white (also male) privilege.

Every one of which, by the way ,translates to “freedom”, “justice” and “being accorded the dignity of being treated as an autonomous individual rather than a member of a group” – all of which are supposed to be values near and dear to our Republic and Western Civilization itself, and all of them things we should be working tirelessly to spread to everyone.

And when some mindless Social Justice Warrior jabbers about “smashing white/male privilege”, the proper response is “so – you want to smash freedom, justice and individual dignity?  See you at the barricades”.

Discussion of all other privileges – academic, social, class – were drowned out.  As they were intended to be.

But with the complete subsumation of the left by identity politics, it’s time to return the favor Peggy McIntosh did us; it’s time to define Urban Progressive Privilege.

Unpacking The Invisible NPR Tote Bag:  I’m going to borrow McIntosh’s format – which I suspect was actually tacitly borrowed from Jeff Foxworthy – of the simple list of attributes of Urban Progressive Privilege.

To wit:

Urban Progressive Privilege; Unpacking the Invisible NPR Tote Bag

Mitch Berg

“You were taught to see Urban Progressive Privilege as a bit of talk show rhetoric – not in terms of a very vislble system conferring dominance on my group via a meritless meritocracy”.   

As an urban progressive, you have been taught about “privilege” by others who have that privilege.  Being able to caterwaul about privilege is a prerogative of the privileged.

Like the concept of “white privilege” (which, conventional wisdom tells us, that “whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege”), the first rule of Urban Progressive Privilege is “I don’t believe there is such a thing”; it’s the water in which the Urban Progressive swims.  So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have Urban Progressive Privilege. I have come to seeUrban Progressive Privilege as an invisible and group package of unearned assets that I can count on using daily, but about which it’s hard to be anything but oblivious.

Urban Progressive Privilege is like an invisible weightless NPR tote bag of special permissions, immunities, secret handshakes, Whole Foods gift cards, a virtual echo chamber accompanying everyone who has that privilege, filtering out almost all cognitive dissonance about political, social or moral questions, and a virtual “cone of silence” immunizing them from liability for anything they say or do that contradicts the group’s stated principles.  As we in Human studies work to reveal Urban Progressive Privilege and ask urban progressives to become aware of their power, so one who writes about havingUrban Progressive Privilege must ask, “having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?”

So – when assessing Urban  Progressive Privilege, can you say any of the following?:

  1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people who believe exactly as I do about politics, society, philosophy, morality and the like, all or nearly all of the time.
  2. I was educated from my earliest years through post-secondary education by people whose political and social beliefs mirrored mine, and who didn’t challenge any of mypolitical, social, philosophical and moral beliefs.
  3. My progressive beliefs were never challenged through four or more years of higher education – indeed, they were reinforced, while competing views were shamed and shouted down.
  4. When I went into the working world, my politics, social background or philosophy were never adversarially questioned.
  5. I work, very likely, in an environment staffed with people who agree with and never challenge my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
  6. My social life is made up of people who share, pretty much to a fault, my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptins.
  7. I can avoid, during my daily life, spending time around anyone who will challenge my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
  8. My neighbors – the people in my physical community in which I live – share, almost without exception, my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs.
  9. If someone in  my social or professional life does express a point of view discordant with my and my group’s political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions intrudes into my sphere, I can count on overwhelming support from the rest of my personal, social, professional circles to defend me.  Those who don’t share our beliefs thus either keep quiet, or are shamed into silence.  Thus, their beliefs have no impact in my life. .
  10. My informational world – my news media, my online social circle, my institutional associations (churches/synagogues, my social groups – will not contradict my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
  11. I can count on the news media I listen to – my community’s newspapers, TV stations, as well as stereotypical outlets like NPR, PBS and the like – to reinforce my political and social assumptions.
  12. I can count on as the entertainment media not to contradict my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.
  13. I can count on the education system in my community not to undercut the political, social, philosophical and moral I’ve tried to pass on to my family.
  14. My kids’ schools give them textbooks, lectures and other materials that reinforce, never undercut, my political, social, philosophical and moral worldview and that which I’ve tried to teach them.
  15. I can be fairly certain that when I go to my kids’ school, the principle will not condescend to me based on my perceived academic or social background.
  16. I have never had anyone laugh at the accent or vocabulary of my native spoken English.
  17. I can rest fairly certain that no “well-meaning” pundit or scholar will ever paternalistically castigate me for “voting against my interests” (as determined by the pundit’s / scholar’s political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions) for voting in accordance with my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs.
  18. I can choose to ignore the parts of our society outside the East Coast, West Coast, and selected “progressive” archipelagos in between, and express not only ignorance but mockery of the rest of the country, without being seen, shamed, and scorned as a provincialist.
  19. I can express scorn for individuals, groups, religions and social classes that don’t share my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs, accents and worldviews, entirely based on those beliefs, and not be shamed and labeled as a bigot.
  20. I can make racist, sexist and classist statements about people who do not share my community’s political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions, and rest assured I will not be castigated for violating community standards.
  21. I have never been treated as a foreign culture in my own country; I have never had journalists, academics or pundits dispatch a special group to research, analyze and report on why my social circle believes and votes as they do – because the media, academics and punditry are from my class, and share my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions; the more aware ones would be offended by being subjected to such a condescending, patriarchal bit of cultural chauvinism.
  22. My children and family are safe, almost entirely, from the economic, social and criminological  consequences of my political, social, philosophical and moral beliefs; indeed, I personally am almost entirely insulated from them.
  23. I can simultaneously say “I believe in science, and have a fact-based worldview” – while never being corrected, much less called out or scorned, for expressing beliefs that have no scientific basis (belief that there are no evolutionary differences between men and women, believe a human isn’t a human until it emerges from the birth canal, believe that there’s scientific evidence that homosexuality is genetic).
  24. I can simultaneously eschew racism and racists, even as I gang up with others like me to oppress black, latino, asian and females who disagree with my political, social, philosophical and moral assumptions.  I can say things like “That’s not a real, authentic (Black, Latino, Asian) person!” and not get scorned as a racist and patriarch.
  25. I can exhibit ghastly contradictions in my world view and be reasonable sure that nobody in my regular social circle is going to say or do anything about it; if I call someone I disagree with a “fascist” or “patriarch” or “1 percenter” while displaying Che Guevara memorabilia or studiously intoning approval for “Chavezism”, nobody in my social or professional life is going to castigate me for it.
  26. I tut-tut about the virtues of Western civilization and praise Multiculturalism – but do so entirely from a perspective that could not exist outside of Western civilization.  Nobody in my personal or profession or social circles ever brings this up, because they all believe the same thing.

I’m looking for more examples.  Keep ’em generic – not related to any specific issue.   .