StevePrefonDead wrote:
[quote]KudzuRunner wrote:
This is a good post. I do, however, question this phrase from you:
"Floyd would almost certainly not be dead if one or more social workers had been quickly deployed to help talk him down from his drug-induced mania and to soften the application of what turned out to be brute force."
Why do you believe this and what is the basis for it?
For better or worse, and due largely to the drugs he'd taken, Floyd was in a hopped-up, panicked state. If you watch the entire police encounter from the moment they show up, you see a guy who is essentially compliant. It takes a long time for the panic to build; it seems like drug-induced claustrophobia, and it kicks into high gear once the cops demand that he get in the back seat of the car. I realize that cops don't have all day, and that they sometimes do finally have to drop the hammer. But given what happened here, and given the fact that Floyd, for all his size, was initially very compliant, it seems evident to me that the presence of a social worker with experience in talking agitated drug users back from the brink would have been a good thing. Surely it would have delayed and hopefully prevented the outcome that did take place.