His Name Was George Floyd
When I was a white belt, my instructor paired me with another white belt who I had not met yet but was in pretty decent shape, seemed really motivated, and came across totally respectable. Generally for me, there are two scenarios where the coach steps in to make a pairing, one to create a safe matchup for a beginner, and one of them a bit more on the motivational side of coaching to intentionally challenge somebody. I was not sure which of these I was at the time. I threw a glance at my instructor and he mouthed a simple instruction ‘do not go easy’.
“He said he couldn’t breathe.”
Fist bump and go, we are on. It became clear rather quickly that I was at a different level than this other white belt. This control I had was getting to my head. I tapped him out twice with just good top pressure to where he eventually gassed out and gave up, but I did not reset with him. “Do not go easy” was the order for our five minutes. The third and final time, I used a knee on belly, where all of my weight was directed into my knee, which was now being supported by this man’s torso, right below the sternum. He tapped out immediately. He said he couldn’t breathe.
“He tapped out immediately.”
At the end of class I needed to know what was it about this guy that the instructor wanted me to push him so hard.
“Because he’s a police officer and if he understands how effective pressure can be then maybe he won’t be so quick to shoot somebody.”
I have been compelled by current events to acknowledge something because the ambiguity of what happened does not exist past a certain point. Innocence or guilt, criminal history or the circumstances leading up to his death have never been more irrelevant. Should he not have resisted arrest according to what the police say? Yes, but this is beyond that, it is about after that.
"The fact that he was a suspect in custody is immaterial—police officers should at all times render aid to those who need it…”
Patrick Yoe, president of the national Fraternal Order of Police
His name was George Floyd. George Floyd. He was a man, a black man, suspected of a non-violent crime because he fit a description. Fair enough, the police have a job to do but how does this end with George Floyd dying, unarmed and subdued? We are supposed to be able to trust our law enforcement to de-escalate, but George Floyd was de-escalated to death. I watched the video, any reasonable person can see when the fight disappears from someone, yet he remained actively pinned down for what we could observe for nearly eight minutes.
I am, to the point of personal angst, fully aware of what knee pressure can do to someone even in a training aspect. In training, the application/drilling of it is approached with significant restraint because it hurts even in the demonstration. George Floyd was not a training partner to these cops, he was the real thing and they were abusing him plain and simple.
“I can’t breathe.”
Philosophies on this can vary, but all of us that practice BJJ would agree that knee pressure is not something you willingly just ride out if applied to you. There is a severe diminishing return of enduring knee pressure while also trying to breathe. It is painful, and it is physically exhausting because there is no choice but for your body to tense up to try and fight the pain, but you have to let up in order to breathe and each breath is pain that only increases through fatigue. The average person cannot even hold a plank for more than a few minutes. Just because someone says “I can’t breathe” does not mean they are without distress, it means they are feeling the physiological/biological response to either fight or fly because the body is on the clock for giving up. There is something to consider here: Not many, if any, can withstand knee pressure for EIGHT MINUTES on any part of the body without triggering that need to survive by either giving up, or by getting desperate. Compounded by the fact that one is already subdued face down, breathing is already constricted by the ground beneath, and the officers on top. George Floyd for eight minutes was fighting for his life, he was not fighting the cops.
George Floyd. Say his name out loud, and soak in how unjust his demise was. While watching the video — my heart screamed for those people/bystanders to make an effective appeal for George Floyd’s safety. It screamed hoping that the police officer keeping the bystanders at distance would have the presence to hear what they were saying, and to intervene with what was going on. I watched and watched waiting for them to sit him up, and complete their arrest, but that never happened. I watched how slowly George Floyd started to lose stamina from withstanding that pressure. I began to imagine the feel of every scrape of the pavement on his face as he struggled to give himself a moment of decompression so he could expand his lungs and take a breath. I watched with sadness the involuntary decision he was having to make of choosing air in spite of pavement. My imagination could feel what I saw happening to George Floyd. I get it, and in watching those moments my perspective on this issue became personal. A bystander cited BJJ and implied that he trains, and for a second I hoped in spite of knowing how this ended, that he would have possessed the emotional intelligence in that moment to get through. It seems that the situation was too escalated even for that. His and the other exclamations of ‘bullshit’ could not have carried anything meaningful. The police in that situation just heard it as an ignorable projection of anger from a belligerent mob.
I do not know why the police handled George Floyd this way, and I do not know how heated things had been that warranted such a heavy response. I suspect we will know in time. I have waxed and waned from wanting to presume a situation that clouded their best judgment, or at their worst, exposed the content of their hearts. Whatever that truth is, the requirement for justice needs to be a heavy price paid by those police officers. With that, I will not judge them beyond that they are responsible for the death of George Floyd, and because of them, this police department and city government owe to the people of Minneapolis, specifically and even more-so to the black community, an active and structured law enforcement application that demands equitable accountability. By the time I will have posted this blog, there have been riots and looting, including another lost life because equitable accountability took too long. Bad leadership has a steep social cost.
Remember George Floyd.
We need to hear from the good guys, but we also need to see the good guys expel their bad apples with some vigor. Words are nice, but until these ideals and principles are demonstrated in lock-step with policy, procedure and personnel, these sentiments are becoming too little and too late.
