SectionC3

That’s not the entirety of the intended audience. You know better. He’s playing politics and using the 1968 playbook. The loser is going to sit on his hands, let this fester, and try to strengthen his shaky standing with Bush-Republican types who are thinking of defecting to Biden but who might stick with Trump out of fear that the nonsense of today is the story of tomorrow if Trump loses.

Nope. I think he should get on TV, address the nation, and try to salve the wound. I realize that he’s incapable but he has to at least try. Get on the phone with black leaders and try to steer the protests to stop the violence. Go visit Minnesota and look like you give a crap about what’s going on. The nation is like, you know, burning, and the leader of the nation is doing not a freaking thing about it. Hoax until proven otherwise.

See him on TV? Address the nation? Visit Minnesota? Nope. Hides in the WH like a wimp. Loser. Couldn’t say it another way? Nah. Let’s invoke some dog whistle BS from back in the day. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

Fake news. I don’t support them. My criticism of trump and his crappy job as president doesn’t mean that I’m a communist or that I support antifa.

Whatevs. Nothing says leadership like standing idly by while the country that he is supposed to lead literally and figuratively burns. He’s a loser.

That was pretty suave of him to quote a Jim Crow era police chief. When the looting starts, the shooting starts. Fuel meet fire.

Obama used to be the president. Trump is the president. And, frankly, trump has done a pretty crappy job in the last several months. last I checked trump is the president of the United States if america. Not of only the 47% percent of the electorate who voted for him in 2016. Not only of the ”red” states. And not only of the self-identified conservatives. He is the president of the entire country. It’s time for him to get off his hands and show a little leadership with respect to a problem that is not of his causing but that is within the ambit of his responsibility to help to resolve.

Nobody said anything about adults being children. Remember GW Bush after 9/11? Reagan after the challenger? That’s how it’s done. Trump is a chump on a number of levels. But this week he also failed the country. In fairness to him, he’s obviously not up to something like this. It’s not who he is. But it’s part of the job, and if he can’t do it then he shouldn’t be the president.

Unfortunately it's becoming political. Democratic turnout will be driven by frustration, with respect to protests, COVID, and the last 3.5 years. Nationalist/deep red Republican turnout will be driven by the usual anti-Hillary, anti-Obama, anti-establishment, nationalist sentiments, coupled with disgust over what "those people" did during the riots. The few people in the middle are the ones to keep an eye on. Impressionable Republicans and independents are critical to both sides right now, and Trump is starting to play this like it's 1968 again. I don't agree with the approach -- I think he has failed the country this week not because there have been riots, but because he is supposed to be a voice of reason, the mourner in chief, and a soothing presence during a time like this. He's been none of those things. But he is making a shrewd selfish political calculation in proceeding as he has done. After all, Nixon won in 1968.

It’s beyond the other three cops. The protestors have complaints that transcend the Floyd incident. And the looters have nothing but crime and anarchy on the mind. This is an historic mess.

According to the AP the man charge is man 2. I looked at the links you posted (thanks; nice job) and man 2 seems to make more sense than man 1 here. good points on your end about reasons for no immediate arrest and on the civil end of things. Nicely done.

We also don’t know what those cops saw and might have been doing at the time. Any criminal liability with respect to those actors is a lot murkier. the speculation here is that the ME’s report was the catalyst for the arrest. As soon as that was in and the prosecutor was comfortable on causation the trigger was pulled on the arrest. The last thing anyone would want here is an arrest and charges defeated by an ME report attributing death to an OD or an underlying medical event. Reasonable cause to believe it was counterfeit, more likely than not.

This is one of the best observations I’ve read on an Internet message board. Well said. We have lost our way.

The country is on fire literally and figuratively and we’re actually having a decent conversation about some of the issues that underlie the literal fire in Minnesota. Please keep your conspiracy theory material out of it for now. Later, fine, we can talk all you want about Russia this and Comey that and we’ll go back to having our usual fun. But this Minnesota stuff is common ground, and important, and we shouldn’t disturb it with something so far afield as this. Thank you.

Not sure. Juggling a couple of things here. Will look later. I’d say doubtful at this point, but we’ll see.

Anything re: any of the other officers?

So they went with the Minnesota equivalent of depraved indifference murder. Note “without intent” and “eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind” phrases in the statute. I’m curious to know how the Minnesota legislature and courts have defined “depraved mind.” That’s the key to the charge. In New York State, it’s very difficult to convict of depraved indifference murder in a one-on-one setting. (Read the case Peo v Barboni.) The definition of “depraved mind” there likely is different from the definition of “depraved indifference” here, so who knows. I’m curious whether the prosecutor included a fallback manslaughter charge.

He always has a shot at getting off. If nothing else there’s always a hope for jury nullification. But a manslaughter charge here probably increases the likelihood of conviction for practical and legal reasons because it’s most consistent with the evidence (at least the evidence that I’ve seen).

It’s probably better cast as evidence of recklessness, not of intent, for the reasons that I noted earlier. You can try to argue intent . . . But I’m skeptical for the aforementioned reasons. Murder requires intent, manslaughter requires recklessness. Taking all of the videos, rioting, and histrionics out of this, this case has all the appearances of a manslaughter.

Maybe, maybe not. That’s why we investigate. Practically speaking, intentional murder is going to be tough to prove. You’re going to have to sell a jury on the idea that a cop intended to choke to death the victim in broad daylight in uniform on a somewhat crowded street and while he might have been aware he was being recorded. Maybe we get more information that would support a murder charge. I’m still skeptical not that such a charge will be levied (this officer, in addition to being in pretty deep ess, also has become a political football), but that such a charge would stick based on what we’ve seen to this point.

Please leave this crap out of this thread. We’re actually getting along for once. There will be a time for politics and discussion of such things as that Warren comment and Trump’s twitter comments from last night. But that time isn’t now.

The review here was conducted by a pissed-off mayor and lasted about as long as it took to watch one of the videos of the incident and dismissed the cops immediately. There may be PBA action under the CBA to reinstate one or more of the terminated officers. The employment status of the officers and any DA or State AG criminal investigation operate separately from one another.

Murder normally is a crime based on intent to kill. Based on what I’ve seen, I don’t know how easy it would be to convict of intentional murder. Manslaughter (probably the equivalent of man 2 in NYS), again based on what I’ve seen, looks like a likelier charge. But this also is exactly the type of case that could be overcharged, so we could see at least one count of murder 2, man 1, and man 2 each levied in an indictment. I’ll add that this almost certainly is a homicide (that’s not the same as murder), and that the uncertainty with respect to whether a murder charge would stick is part of the reason why it’s important to proceed prudently and investigate before charging.

Disagree. A process must be followed because we have due process of law in this country. In the state criminal context the “badge” doesn’t make for a different review process. It may be that the process is more difficult because of the role played by the person under investigation at the time of what apparently was a homicide here, but there’s no special or different treatment here because the “target” of the investigation acted in a law enforcement capacity at the time of the incident in question.

That . . . Certainly adds another layer to the onion. How bizarre.