Poor old George’s lonesome death
May 25, 2025 in perspective
If nine yottabytes of words written about George Floyd in five years haven’t cleared everything up, let me have a go.
If worldwide riots, a stream of black-owned businesses torched to the ground, a slew of Targets ransacked by animals with clothes and TVs, a shoplifter chanting, “I can’t breathe, whew!” made no sense, let me take a crack at sense.
Every time the cameras at CNN, NBC, and Fox shut off, Minneapolitans shake our damn heads at the piles of dead flowers, vile graffiti, garbage, needles, dumped stolen cars, and occasional bodies at George Floyd Square.
Woulda shoulda couldas:
He woulda lived had he not been killing his own heart. He had enough on-board fentanyl and meth to kill several men. He overdosed and nearly died weeks before, according to “Mama,” his girlfriend. He was high in 2019 when arrested, and couldn’t follow police directions. He had had Covid.
He woulda been saved if his two restraining cops, rookies trained by Chauvin, had broken the chain of authority, but no one woulda, not four days on the job. If you think you’re better than them, you’re as high as Floyd.
He shoulda had first aid, shoulda been flipped on his side, shoulda had his airway checked, and Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee off him.
He coulda had an ambulance but 911 sent it four blocks away to 36th and Park.
It’s a woulda coulda shoulda mess.
Wish I had an inside angle; I have only a short stack of coincidences and backgrounds.
I knew third precinct cops to be tough. When I was jumped in my youth by four black guys in the 3rd precinct, and had my face smashed, requiring surgery, a cop responding only cracked his window, laughed at my gory face, and said, “What do you want me to do?”
I don’t know, catch the guys? Classic dummy, I was. Cops don’t “catch guys,” usually. Third precinct cops were also hard on my son’s buddies when they caught them spraying and tagging up an abandoned building. (Our son got away.) Trapping them hiding in a dark basement bathroom, one set down his flashlight and said to them, “Let’s make it fair. You get by me, you can go.” They didn’t even flinch, so they got roughed up and put face-down on the floor.
I assume everyone has cop stories. My bad ones are countervailed by twenty years of good ones as a teacher. Cops were great with kids, often revered, and followed around as far as teachers would let kids hang on and chase them.
I’m a fiction writer, a seam ripper. Empirical reporting bores me, although I did it for one derailment in my career. But I balk at Floyd reporters’ skimpy, context- and history-free takes, blabbing how policing has changed or not. I get especially hacked off at pundits’ blurbs about the “unrest” Floyd’s death started. Poor old Floyd — he didn’t start anything. And it’s not unrest. Riots are riots.
Educated don’t riot. Mostly, ignorant, suggestible people riot.
Educated say, “Hey, black Harvard scholar Roland Fryer proved that black people are not massacred by cops. There are no dead thousands. Many blacks are roughed up, but they are not killed inordinately compared to whites.
Educated say, “Hey, we know Philando Castile’s death was wrong,” even though he had 52 police stops, admitted having a gun, smelled of marijuana, and hot-boxed a five-year-old in the backseat. We had Thurman Blevins threatening his girlfriend in 2018, shooting up the northside, aiming at cops, and dying. We had Jamar Clark in 2015 who beat up his girlfriend, wrestled with paramedics, and died reaching for a cop’s gun.
Educated say, “Hey, we were lied to about Mike Brown’s death in 2014 which mobilized the Black Lives Matter movement. We couldn’t even say ‘thug’ after he punched a store clerk, grabbed cigars, walked down the middle of the street, fought a cop, reached for his gun, and died. You can learn more about Mike Brown’s death here and watch the wonderful Eli and his father Shelby Steele’s documentary. I follow Eli Steele on Substack. You can here.
Misled people forgot or were never told of the iron fist of Obama’s Dear Colleague Letter of 2014 or never heard of it, plus now it’s rescinded, and the rescission is still under review. I say iron fist because of sweeping mandated changes to discipline, plus Obama said Trayvon Martin, who was killed attacking a security guard, looked like the son he never had. Really? Was Obama a golden gloves boxer and home prowler? Why lie, man? The Letter basically said, data showed schools disciplined students in discriminatory fashion, they/we must erase Level 1 offenses (sassing, defiance, property destruction, truancy), we must not keep records of race, and must institute positive behavior interventions.
Every teacher, every parent, everyone knows, if you let kids be naughty, they will ruin you, wreck your house or classroom, go all Lord of the Flies. Children love limits.
Even ignorant people know this. Some just believe propaganda.
Funny, if you get the memes.
But back to the lonesome death of poor old George, the cop’s unflinching pin-job on him, flagellating from his overdose, who said he couldn’t breathe inside the cop car, and begged to be put down on the street. What is there to add?
Racism. You know, how many of Chauvin’s 22 years in prison stem from racism, and how many just for murder? No one asks, no one dares ask. In a panic and ignorance of deaths by cop, we do not care about white Tony Timpa who died in 2016 just like Floyd.
We just don’t care. There’s no school-to-prison pipeline but there sure as hell is a teacher-college-to-school pipeline of rules demanding we drop federal special education laws that protected kids from our student criminals. A lot of my kids were gang bangers — they fully admitted it out loud in class — and were some of the nicest kids I knew. But that’s what our school admins made us do, drop Level 1 discipline, stop recording incidents, and they paid principals bonuses not to suspend black kids. But hey, that’s another pipeline.
I can add nothing more on this anniversary of the lonesome death of old Floyd. I used to go bowling at 38th and Chicago, living on Powderhorn Park. I saw a terrible bus accident there I won’t relate, as it haunts me. If I was on my bike there, I always kept going through the rough intersection. Kept my eyes up, chest out, stood and bucked those pedals.
Poor old George, Houston transplant, seemed like a nice guy when he wasn’t tweaking, or pointing a knife at a pregnant woman’s belly to rob her. No way would he have lived this long had he survived that cop encounter. Some say he was a good guy, they miss him, or some fantasy of him. We are bound to keep spilling yottabytes of words to make sense of his sad death. I may not have helped, but I hope I lent some reality to the conversation.
Well you did the thing. Man. What a shitty mess to a city and people who terminally try to not offend. You get what you deserve, you get what you don't deserve.