Specifically, fenantyl & meth, and he had serious heart disease.

And say what you want about the scum who rioted over Rodney King, they at least waited until the cops he assaulted were acquitted.

As for the peaceful protesters, we all know that if they'd been on the other side of the ideological spectrum, no matter how justified their complaints, even those not of their persuasion who were inclined to be fair or not actively hostile, would still be calling for them to cease & desist, to shut up and go home, and stop giving cover to the rioters, the looters and the terrorists using the same incident as an excuse.

And this is not exactly a justified protest. It's not like the system was even given a chance to work. There is no one justifying the actions of Chauvin, even if it turns out he's not directly responsible for Floyd's death (unless he sold him the drugs and has been working on a long-term scheme to stress Floyd's heart - you never know). In fact, before the animals took to the streets to give the whole thing a bad odor, the nationwide outrage, from the president on down, over the images and videos of Floyd's arrest, made it doubtful that Chauvin and his colleagues would even get a fair trial.

Finally, regarding the apparent common thread in the "can't breathe" narrative, black people whine a lot in dealing with the police. As someone who pays close attention to the local police department and its dealings, I see this a lot, even from the point of view of a libertarian attitude toward enforcement policies, as someone who is actively looking for malfeasance and transgressions against civil rights, who is suspicious of most traffic enforcement practices. Recently, a young motorist who hit someone in a Walmart parking lot made an inquiry about her accident report, complaining that the officer didn't listen to her side of the story (the report, which is a matter of public record, has two lines, one stating what one driver said and one stating what the other said), saying "Maybe because I'm seventeen or maybe because I'm black." As soon as she said those words, at the chief's direction, the internal affairs officer was directed to look into the matter. Because a teenager didn't like how a cop who was wearing a badge the day she was born, wrote up her accident report. In this same town, earlier this year, a cop gunned down a shoplifting suspect who had fled in a vehicular pursuit, and a sergeant who was on-duty with him casually admitted in a conversation to beating up the shoplifter's partner-in-crime, after the shooting. Nothing happened to him, aside from an extended paid vacation and no official notice was taken of the sergeant's comment. The circumstances of the shooting were that the shoplifter drove into a cul de sac while fleeing multiple police cars, and was cornered. Several cops started getting out of their cars, but he didn't give up and turned around and tried to drive out, coming in the direction of one officer whose car was in his way. The officer, seeing the suspect driving near his car as he got out of the drivers' side, decided it would a safer situation for the general public if the car was suddenly occupied by a dead man, so he emptied the magazine of his weapon into the vehicle. The horror and trauma of this incident caused the sergeant to "tool up" the shoplifter's colleague who had bailed out of the vehicle well before the pursuit got into the neighborhood of the fatal confrontation. Again, I stress, nothing was done to either of the officers, regarding discipline. But the same department, the same chief, in the same year, referred a case to internal affairs when an 18 year old black girl falsely complained about the most experienced patrolman in the department's summation of two different stories about a motor vehicle accident...because she raised the possibility that he was racist.

People seize on the fact that both George Floyd and Eric Garner told the cops "I can't breathe," but the real amazing datum in the incidents was that they were telling the truth. "I can't breathe" is what millions of black suspects say, right up there with "the handcuffs are too tight" and "I only had two beers." Millions of white people say things like that, too. It's the boy who cried wolf, except in the case of Floyd and Garner there actually WAS a wolf, and in Floyd's case, the cop might have given it a hand. Cops who listen to this stuff end up facing unsecured arrest subjects, and have to start beating on them or pepper-spraying them to subdue them all over again. And they get shit for it for the rest of their careers. Not relevant? Then why is it a defense for blacks who don't cooperate with the police against known criminals from their communities, who attack police officers just trying to do their jobs - peer pressure is a legit defense or it isn't. Now, this is not to say that it in anyway justifies leaving Floyd or Garner facedown on the ground a second past the moment when the cuffs click, but I'm also constantly being told there is more to things than the cold hard facts, that you need to empathize with people, to understand their feelings and experiences and know where they're coming from.

And now, no one in a position of power will take seriously the idea of demilitarizing the police, because we need that gear in case people decide to turn their cities into war zones again. We need no-knock warrants, in case the police need to go after whatever the fashion of the moment decides is a 'bad' guy. Separating parents and children is fine when you don't approve of their religion; lock up the bastards and screw the 4th & 5th Amendments, toss due process and embrace mob justice, if they're men accused of rape, no matter how long it's been since the alleged crime or the lack of evidence against them beyond a single person's word. Forget double jeopardy if they're white men acquitted of crimes against a violent black man on PCP. A month ago, the leftists would have literally killed people to keep the police armed with armor, shields and automatic weapons, back when it was not blacks, but conservatives and champions of personal liberty demonstrating at government buildings and demanding an end to extreme and excessive government repressive measures that were destroying the economy, wiping out livelihoods and driving people to suicide. People gathering in churches was a lethal threat to the public safety, but people gathering to whine about an injustice that has not even happened yet... oh that's fine.

Meanwhile, our local police department has processes record numbers of firearms purchaser ID applications this week.