I'm sure the police have already seen the video and it's been filed in their spank banks.

It's an especially absurd proposal given how it is increasingly unlikely the police even caused Floyd's death. The autopsy found more than three times a typical lethal dose of fentanyl, as well as methamphetamine in his system, an enlarged heart with blocked arteries, (one of five of which was 90% blocked and the other two 75% blocked). He was not aspyxiated or choked (the autopsy found his neck muscles were not even bruised). He claimed he couldn't breathe before he was even put on the ground while resisting arrest. He was subject to a common, legal suspect-control method taught by police academies around the country, and appears to have died due to his overdose and drug-induced panic.
Perhaps Harrell should suggest new officers watch the full 20 minute bodycam of the Floyd arrest, to see just how nonsensical the suggestion that four Minneapolis police officers, only two of whom were white, intentionally killed him due to racism really is, and how easily we are misled by footage without context.

@2 What fucking planet are you from?

"Don't believe your eyes, just listen to me."

Fuck off FactsToSupportMyRacism @2

https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/man-pinned-down-by-minneapolis-police-officer-dies.html

Maybe it was a bit too much for me to expect people to consider new facts and factors after they emerged, or that no video can give a 100% accurate version of events.

@6 -- said percentage'll Plummet
as much better Deep Fakes show up.

While I'm not a King County resident in a position to vote for Seattle's next mayor I'm left scratching my head, too, about mayoral candidate Bruce Harrell and his campaign platform. Do I have the same candidate who once made an off comment about dog poop?
And now Harrell, if elected to serve as Seattle's next mayor, wants all officers on the SPD force to watch the George Floyd video? That's IT? I agree with Echohawk and Gonzalez---that's not going to change anything. Systematic racism will only change when long-conditioned harmful thought patterns of violence, bigotry, and misogyny end. Additionally, police forces nationwide---not just Seattle----would come a long way towards healthy community reform by cutting ties with the NRA. Why does the typical police officer, trained to protect and serve need an AR-15 military assault rifle with enough rounds of ammo to blow up a city block, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and a plexiglass shield to patrol a neighborhood?

We are now in the TENTH year of the federal consent decree for police reform in Seattle.
TENTH.
Yet 29 people have been killed by SPD since John T. Williams, and hundreds were beaten, abused, severely injured, and falsely arrested over the last year by the SPD.
None of these victims will see any form of accountability or justice under our current police "accountability" system, designed and/or supported by folks like Gonzalez, Harrell, & Echohawk.
Yet the basis for a solution is simple and clear: 100% civilian oversight of police, with 100% civilian investigations and discipline.
Yet these are exactly the things opposed by Gonzalez, Harrell, & possibly Echohawk.

None of the candidates for mayor have made any public statements (that I know of) regarding the recent SPD murders of Danny Rodriguez (2/7/2019), Ryan Smith (5/8/2019), Terry Caver (5/19/2020), or Derek Hayden (2/16/2021): all people in severe mental health crisis brandishing knives. Yet many of these candidates proclaimed their wokeness when Charleena Lyles was murdered by SPD in 2017 and when George Floyd was murdered last year.
It is not that difficult to see the difference between performative pretense and principled positions. Believe what they show you.

Kneeling on the upper back/neck area of a larger, shouting, high suspect who is resisting arrest, as a form of restraint, is reasonable. It is not racist, as it would have been the best practice with a suspect of any race. All officers acted calmly and professionally. Chauvin would probably easily be declared innocent, but any jurors in his case are probably aware their lives are in danger if they came to the "wrong" verdict.

The solution to America's police violence problem is so simple: Stop hiring military combat veterans.

These brave men and women have served their country, but they're damaged goods, and their training, brainwashing and traumatic "search and destroy" experience can in no way serve public safety.

If you've been going house-to-house in Falujah, your instincts have been honed to do two things: Identify threats, and "neutralize" them. You can't unlearn that type of experience, and so should be disqualified from civilian police patrol duties.

@11 I thought you had me blocked professor....

"But NONE of that WOULD EVER happen if the police budget was not currently being threatened with being cut by 50%"

That's not true and you know it Professor. After the murder, and the protests, the need for police reform was obvious. Seattle was lucky enough to have a reform minded police chief who could have been a tremendous asset in making real changes.
But the Seattle City Council, led by Gonzalez, jumped in like fools demanding a 50% reduction and driving Carmen Best out of town.

Gonzalez' treatment of Best was shameful. That alone disqualifies her from being Mayor.

Is Harrell suggesting that police are dumb animals who don't know their own strength?

Cops know what they are doing - they hold our lives in contempt. The only way to get this under control is to throw a bunch in prison. That's a message the rest will understand.

@2: "He claimed he couldn't breathe before he was even put on the ground while resisting arrest."

Then the police wasted over 8 minutes that they could have used to roll a medic unit to the scene.

@17 We can pretend that Best resigned in disgrace for losing control of the staff of the East Precinct when the ran away and abandoned the building. Its no like anybody is ever going to be held to account for that fiasco in the real world.

@2: No need to pile on over your idiotic theory on cause of death, but even if true, don't you think around minute 7 when Floyd went unconscious would have been a good time for Derek to get up off his neck?

You've inadvertently raised another national police scandal more people should be talking about. Medical examiners around the country are in deep hock to police departments and maintain their lucrative contracts by always arriving at the "cause of death" the police want at risk of losing their contract if they don't. Radley Balko over at WaPo wrote an entire book about it worth reading: "The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist."

What's the point of showing the SPD the video. I suspect SPD Union leader Mile Solan is probably already spreading the rumor that Derek Chauvin was actually an Antifa plant.

@11: "But NONE of that WOULD EVER happen if the police budget was not currently being threatened with being cut by 50%."

Ha, ha, ha. The Defunderpants Gnomes trooped through Council chambers, the first female BIPOC SPD Chief quit, thousands of CM Herbold's constituents signed a change.org petition for her recall, and nobody really believes even this Council will try anything that blitheringly stupid again anytime soon. Defunding isn't a threat; it's not even a promise.

But, no matter what happens, you'll tell us all about how The Second Coming of Nikkita Oliver was the real reason.

@14 https://twitter.com/ccechohawk/status/1367246169202561027

Police reform is the least of the worries for this city lets start on the horde of meth head junkies no one seems to do shit about. If anything the police should be making it hard af for people to get their fix in tent cities.

@29: If there are 171,670 persons living on the streets of Seattle, after years of Seattle spending $100M/annually on homeless services, then that is pretty severe indictment of our failed homeless policy.

Why, exactly, should Seattle's citizens cede our parks and sidewalks to campers? It's not like camping in our parks has proven to be great path to a stable home anywhere. (Lisa Vach might still be alive if she'd chosen a roof over her head in Tacoma over camping in Cal Anderson Park.)

For another question you won't answer, how about explaining why some commenters here seem so deeply emotionally invested in defending our failed homeless policy?

But thanks for the laugh -- whenever anyone dodges a question with the "for the children!" cry, we know the policy he's defending has well and truly failed.

@31: No one here has expressed amusement at suffering of children. What I have expressed amusement at, and will now continue to express amusement at, right here, is your continued cries of "WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!!?!?!!?" when confronted by the abject failure of our homeless policy. As I noted @30, you do this to avoid answering any question about why we have failed so miserably to help the homeless in Seattle. Thank you for validating my point exactly, @31-35.

All you're doing is admitting, in a round-about, dishonest and verbally-abusive manner, that our policy has chronically failed, to the point of being completely indefensible. Attempts at obfuscating that point by attacking anyone who attempts to address it merely raises your amusement value.

I will give you credit for admitting, albeit again in a verbally-abusive manner, that mental illness plays a role in homelessness. Please do try to get The Stranger and Seattle's City Council to admit this as well; we're years into our homelessness crisis, and yet, they have shown no interest in so doing.

Fortunately there are better choices like Echohawk and González, although Sawant should throw her hat in the ring so we can see aggressive leadership on socially relevant issues like homelessness and police brutality. Farrell looks like another promising newcomer with progressive policy proposals, whereas Harrell comes across as mildly idiotic and ineffectual, like lame-duck Durkan.

@38: CM Sawant knows perfectly well she will not again get elected city-wide. She retreated into the relative safety of District 3 the moment it was created, and even there, she had to spend huge gobs of out-of-city money to eke out a 4-point victory. Furthermore, Socialist Alternative considers our District 3 seat to be their corporate property, and will not allow her to vacate it. There is no chance she will run for Mayor.

We get it, you are schilling for Gonzales with this post.

When you have the white power crew fending for Harrell here as trolls to lie about what 240 million viewers across the globe saw for 9 minutes with our own eyes, you know he's not the right candidate.

When you have trolls so emboldened that they make a claim like @2 did, in the face of facts and even a cursory google search, not to mention to be called out with citation within 5 posts and for him and his friends to pretend not to see it shows something somewhat funny: Seattle's altright Maga's and WP fashies are backing Harrell. Surprising that they arent supporting the "local business owner" Elysian "keep the gentrification train going and kick out teh rest of teh blax for local white businesses" brewery candidate, but hey, life is full of surprises.