A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post at Precipice entitled "The Whole Truth." A couple of instances have come along since then that reinforce the point I was making, namely, that
[w]hen we do know the whole picture, though, we’re not only remiss but deceptive if we don’t put all the facts on the table.
One is some new information about George Floyd that I included, as a link, in my Thursday Roundup, immediately below this post, here at LITD. That information has to do with how the Hennepin County chief medical officer views the role of fentanyl and methamphetamine in Floyd's death.
Yesterday, at Knowledge Is Good, former state and federal prosecutor George Parry filled in the timeline by which the prosecutors there became privy to the toxicology report showing that Floyd was OD-ing at the time of his run-in with police. Upshot: That document didn't come to light until after charges had been filed against Chauvin et al:
These charges were based on the autopsy performed by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office and a private “re-autopsy” performed at the request of the Floyd family’s attorney. Based on those procedures, the medical examiner issued a revised autopsy report stating that Floyd had died of “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression.” In short, Floyd’s death was allegedly caused by the manner in which the police had restrained him.
But the police defendants were charged before the medical examiner had received the report of Floyd’s toxicology screen by NMS Labs of Horsham, Pennsylvania.
Then, on May 31, 2020, NMS Labs forwarded Floyd’s toxicology report to the Hennepin County Medical Examiners’ Office.
And that’s when the proverbial fecal matter hit the fan.
At 7:30 p.m. on May 31, 2020, prosecutors “met” online with Dr. Andrew Baker, Chief Medical Examiner of Hennepin County, to discuss Floyd’s toxicology report. Take a look at this recently released June 1, 2020, memorandum by Assistant County Attorney Amy Sweasy of that discussion.
So there they were, staring at the just-received and damning toxicology report that blew to smithereens the whole prosecution theory that the police had killed Floyd. To their undoubted dismay, Dr. Baker, the chief medical examiner, had to concede that at 11 ng/mL, Floyd had “a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances.” He also conceded that the fentanyl overdose “can cause pulmonary edema,” a frothy fluid build-up in the lungs that was evidenced by the finding at autopsy that Floyd’s lungs weighed two to three times normal weight.
This is consistent with Officer Kueng’s observation at the scene that Floyd was foaming at the mouth and, as found at autopsy, that his lungs were “diffusely congested and edematous.”
In other words, like a drowned man, Floyd’s lungs were filled with fluid. And that was the obvious and inescapable reason why Floyd kept shouting over and over again that he couldn’t breathe even when he was upright and mobile.
The memorandum ends with Dr. Baker’s devastating conclusion that “if Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he [Dr. Baker] would conclude that it was an overdose death.”
Translation: this toxicology report drives a stake through the heart of our murder case. How do we justify criminally charging these police officers and explain away our colossal screw-up?
It is quite telling that this explosively exculpatory June 1 memorandum was not released by the prosecution until August 25, 2020. All of which prompts these questions:
First, why did the prosecution wait three months to release this memorandum?
Second, if the prosecution had released this information in a timely fashion, would that have helped to quell the anti-police outrage that has fueled the nationwide orgy of rioting and looting?
Third, in light of Floyd’s toxicology results and the medical examiner’s assessment that Floyd’s fentanyl overdose caused him to essentially drown in his own bodily fluid, why haven’t the charges against all of the police defendants been dropped?
Think about it. This nation has been subjected to three months of its cities being torched and looted in response to an inaccurate narrative.
And now, more details are emerging about the Jacob Blake situation:
the police dispatcher said a woman had called police saying “her boyfriend was present and was not supposed to be on the premises.”
That certainly made it sound more like what I alluded to initially. If there was a warrant out for Blake for domestic abuse, sexual assault, etc. then it would make sense if a restraining order was in place. Now, most of these details are being confirmed. The New York Post reported last night that the woman in question was a repeat victim of Blake’s and she was the one who called the police to the scene after Blake pushed his way into her home and sexually assaulted her again. Before you click through and read the rest of that article, I will warn you in advance that the details of the assault are offered in a rather graphic form and may be disturbing to some readers.
The cops involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake — which touched off a fresh wave of angry, anti-police sentiment across the country — were attempting to arrest him for violating a restraining order stemming from an alleged sexual assault, The Post has learned.
Blake, 29, was forbidden from going to the Kenosha home of his alleged victim from the May 3 incident, and police were dispatched Sunday following a 911 call saying he was there.
The responding officers were aware he had an open warrant for felony sexual assault, according to dispatch records and the Kenosha Professional Police Association, which released a statement on the incident on Friday.
So this wasn’t some meeting of happenstance between Jason Blake and the police. They had been called to the scene by a repeat sexual assault victim. There was already a warrant out for Blake’s arrest and the cops were there to execute it. The cops knew about all of this before they arrived, explaining how they might have been prepared for a confrontation when they got there and their general approach in trying to take Blake into custody. Blake’s family is calling any discussion of his history prior to the shooting “garbage” but it certainly seems relevant.
You should read the linked New York Post article to get fully elucidated. This woman was damn scared of Jacob Blake.
It may be too much to ask in this overheated summer of 2020 that everyone insist on enough facts about these situations to preclude their coming to emotion-driven conclusions that have society-wide consequences.
It doesn't take much - just a few of these situations that become the hot news of the hour without all relevant information on the table - for what remains of trust in post-America's news-reporting industry to fully evaporate. That void will be filled by common acceptance of the most inflammatory narrative out there, and the resultant anarchy will gain further momentum.
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