As we near the start of the trial of the Minneapolis police officers accused of murdering George Floyd, it is essential that you understand that these officers are being railroaded and should be exonerated once the full evidence is presented. The four police officers now charged in the death of Floyd handled the situation according to the training they received by the Minneapolis Police Department. These officers were not going rogue nor were they engaging in racist misconduct. They followed procedure in handling Mr. Floyd. What they did not know is that George Floyd had just ingested a deadly dose of fentanyl.
If you are part of the mob ready to lynch Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the “murder” of George Floyd, put your rope away. You are wrong. Officer Chauvin will be able to prove in court that his use of his knee on the side of the neck of Floyd was an approved technique that the Minneapolis Police Department trained him to use. There are two critical pieces of evidence for Officer Chauvin–the training manual for the Minneapolis Police Department Police Academy and unambiguous video evidence.
Take a look at the training manual standard and procedure for using a neck restraint–it has been on the books for more than eight years. Don’t take my word for it, read it yourself:
5-311 USE OF NECK RESTRAINTS AND CHOKE HOLDS (10/16/02) (08/17/07) (10/01/10) (04/16/12)
DEFINITIONS I.
Choke Hold: Deadly force option. Defined as applying direct pressure on a person’s trachea or airway (front of the neck), blocking or obstructing the airway (04/16/12)
Neck Restraint: Non-deadly force option. Defined as compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck). Only sworn employees who have received training from the MPD Training Unit are authorized to use neck restraints. The MPD authorizes two types of neck restraints: Conscious Neck Restraint and Unconscious Neck Restraint. (04/16/12)
Conscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with intent to control, and not to render the subject unconscious, by only applying light to moderate pressure. (04/16/12)
Unconscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with the intention of rendering the person unconscious by applying adequate pressure. (04/16/12)
PROCEDURES/REGULATIONS II.
The Conscious Neck Restraint may be used against a subject who is actively resisting. (04/16/12)
The Unconscious Neck Restraint shall only be applied in the following circumstances: (04/16/12)
On a subject who is exhibiting active aggression, or;For life saving purposes, or;
On a subject who is exhibiting active resistance in order to gain control of the subject; and if lesser attempts at control have been or would likely be ineffective.
Neck restraints shall not be used against subjects who are passively resisting as defined by policy. (04/16/12)
After Care Guidelines (04/16/12)
After a neck restraint or choke hold has been used on a subject, sworn MPD employees shall keep them under close observation until they are released to medical or other law enforcement personnel.
An officer who has used a neck restraint or choke hold shall inform individuals accepting custody of the subject, that the technique was used on the subject.
The autopsy (https://www.scribd.com/document/464269559/George-Floyd-Autopsy-FULL-REPORT#from_embed) lists the following in Floyd’s blood:
Fentanyl 11 ng/mL
(If you wonder how much will kill you:
“The lethal dose of fentanyl is generally stated to be 2 milligrams. ”
https://oxfordtreatment.com/substance-abuse/fentanyl/lethal-dose/
“Fentanyl is an extremely potent opioid drug. Individuals can experience potentially fatal effects from extremely small amounts of the drug. If fentanyl is taken in conjunction with other opiates, its lethal dose is even smaller.”)
Also present:
Norfentanyl 5.6 ng/mL
4-ANPP 0.65 ng/mL
Methamphetamine 19 ng/mL
Various types of THC: 11-Hydroxy Delta-9 THC 1.2 ng/mL; Delta-9 Carboxy THC 42 ng/mL; Delta-9 THC 2.9 ng/mL
I think the police kept Floyd from driving away in his car, and probably dying behind the wheel while doing so. Having watched the video I concluded the political leaders of the city responsible for running the police department should have been voted out of office, but it certainly hasn’t convinced me that one particular video is all I would need to see as a juror to convict any of the police officers of criminal conduct. The residents of the city didn’t come to the same conclusion; but on a good note their conduct for days was ‘mostly peaceful’. I’m sure it will be the same at the conclusion of this trial.
Fred,
The test result was in nanograms, not milligrams.
Mark,
You should read the article Fred it correct.
A. Blood drug and novel psychoactive substances screens:
Fentanyl 11 ng/mL
Norfentanyl 5.6 ng/mL
4-ANPP 0.65 ng/mL
Methamphetamine 19 ng/mL
11-Hydroxy Delta-9 THC 1.2 ng/mL;
Delta-9 Carboxy THC 42 ng/mL; Delta-9 THC 2.9 ng/mL
Cotinine positive
Caffeine positive
With 11 nanograms per milliliter in his blood, Floyd was a dead man walking or, in this case, laying on the ground.
According to my computer comparing ng to mg, there are 1,000,000 ng in one mg. So if a fatal dose of fentanyl would be 2 milligrams, a fatal dose measured in nanograms would be +/- 2,000,000 nanograms.
17 nanograms of fentanyl and norfentanyl combined would not appear to be sufficient to be a fatal dose. Whether the fentanyl and norfentanyl (major metabolite of fentanyl) in the quantities stated in the autopsy report would be subject to dueling expert testimony.
I unfortunately left some words out of the second sentence of the second paragraph above. That sentence should read “Whether the fentanyl and norfentanyl (major metabolite of fentanyl) in the quantities stated in the autopsy report are sufficient to cause death or contribute to death by asphyxiation would be subject to dueling expert testimony.”
There are pain patches which doctors prescribe which dispense fentanyl in dosages of micrograms/hour. The smallest dose is 12 micrograms/hour. One microgram is equal to 1,000 nanograms. So a 12 microgram/per hour pain patch would put about 12,000 nanograms per hour into the system of a pain patch user.
https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?setid=4c3a6171-19e4-40c2-83f3-fb54d4736e4b
Chuck,
Here’s another source that puts the fatal dosage in terms ng/mL:
https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/drug-profiles/fentanyl_en
“The estimated lethal dose of fentanyl in humans is 2 mg. The recommended serum concentration for analgesia is 1–2 ng/ml and for anaesthesia it is 10–20 ng/ml. Blood concentrations of approximately 7 ng/ml or greater have been associated with fatalities where poly-substance use was involved.”
An interesting bit in this particular article was the apparent variance in the lethality of different non-pharmaceutical (i.e. street synthesized) isomers.
“A significant number of deaths have been reported in the EU and USA following the ingestion of illicitly synthesised or ‘designer’ fentanyls, sometimes referred to as non-pharmaceutical fentanyls (NPF). In the case of NPFs, many deaths — characterised by their suddenness — have been caused by the use of heroin laced with fentanyl or with one of its more potent analogues, such as alpha-methyl fentanyl and 3-methylfentanyl…Using a method capable of measuring both of the 3-methylfentanyl isomers, a report on an epidemic of 3-methylfentanyl fatalities in Estonia (Ojanperä et al. (2008)) stated that the average combined concentration of the isomers was — at 1.9 ng/ml — approximately 10 times lower than the concentrations found in Canadian and US fatalities attributed solely to fentanyl (ranging from 17–25 ng/ml) (Hull et al. (2007), Martin et al. (2006).”
I have no idea what isomer he had used obviously, but I’d hazard a guess that it was not commercially manufactured in a US pharmaceutical lab. The European studies cited above are 12-15 years old, so what are the odds that those NPF isomers have since been manufactured and distributed in the U.S. in large quantities? I have no way of proving that, but it’s a point worth considering. Also of note the the 17-25 ng/mL average found in US and Canadian ODs from that time period dealt with those deaths deemed to have been caused solely by fentanyl.
I’d say at the very least, given the other substances in Floyd’s blood, he definitely qualifies as a poly-substance user. So it would appear that by the metrics listed in this article, yes, he was in all likelihood a dead man walking.
nanogram/milliliter.
The average death dose was 9.96 ng/mL.
According to George Floyd’s toxicology report, his blood contained 11.0 ng/mL Fentanyl, plus 5.6 ng/mL norfentanyl, 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine, and three other drugs.
Larry, the emcdda article that AK mentions above clearly states that serum concentrations of 10-20ng/ml are used for anaesthesia, so I can not see how you can claim that 9.96 ng/ml is a lethal dose.
The most widely cited article I can find states that the average lethal dose is in the range 17-25 ng/ml, and that is with cases associated with poly‐drug intoxication.
Yeah, Right,
How long would he had stayed awake driving had the police never showed up?
And that’s another question altogether, Fred.
Nobody is denying the accuracy of the post-mortem blood test. Floyd unquestionably had a high level of Fentanyl in his system.
The issue I have is with Larry’s argument that Floyd had a fatal level of Fentanyl in his body.
My understanding is that tolerance to all opiates can be developed over time. This is one of the reasons why opiate doses tend to increase over time in medical use. The norfentanyl was described as a metabolite.
So the average may be a mere statistical observation with little evidentiary value.
In liberal insane California, a local community blog writer claimed she actually heard George Floyd’s neck crack when the racist cop gleefully stomped on his neck. She watched the video – this was her truth.
I suspect she still clings to this version of events and hope she never gets called for jury duty. I personally saw Chauvin was only leaning his knee against the head, and was rocking his body weight away from Floyd. That was my truth watching the exact same video. .
Consequently our town too was required to “take the knee” for 3000 strong BLM really (super spreader event okayed) and we still have to look at a huge ugly mural downtown that sprang up overnight of Floyd’s face emblazoned with the words – “I can’t breathe”.
Far better to over-write that now infamous line with: “I can’t bother with the truth”. Personally I would prefer “This is your brain on drugs.”. But i know my limits in this state.
Dear Deap,
“liberal insane California” is and has been under attack for long time. Many of its citizens are quite insane. This is a crazy place, baby! That’s why I love it. The thing about California is that we are “all” here, from everywhere and every what. Since we all need the same things: clean air, clean water, healthy food, a stable society, good education, a meaningful life, and an expectation these these things will continue, accepting that changes and adjustments must come… If we can’t make it here, now, with what can be unleashed in hatred, then there ain’t nowhere that gets to have a future.
I have visited California many times and have driven one end to the other.
The thing that always struck me was the children posing as adults.
Most of the people I encountered were pleasant in a childlike way.
Any chance he will get a fair trial?
Unless you are a juror, j. casey, I guess that would depend on your predisposition. If you think the officers should be found not guilty, then it would be reasonable for you to believe that the trial was not fair if they are convicted. And vice versa.
Only those who are presented with all of the evidence, and all of the expert testimony, and all of the argument, as well as the instructions from the court, will be qualified to render a verdict. Ask the jurors after the trial whether they believe the process was fair, and my bet is that they will say it was, regardless of the outcome.
Always a chance. I think it unlikely they will convince a jury he intended to kill Floyd, like right there in a crowd with everybody staring at him? Unlikely scenario. More likely he will be found guilty of negligence. A lot working against him there, including his own dispatcher calling a supervisor to check on the situation she was seeing on her screen. The need to maintain that position raised a lot of LE eyebrows, there will be a lot of cops willing to testify that they were always strongly trained to ease up on neck restraints immediately after the subject is subdued. There was no reason not to have that guy cuffed hand and foot well before 8 minutes were up. IMO Chavin really didn’t know Floyd was in deep distress, but his job was to know, so his odds aren’t good.
The guys I feel for are the trainees who accompanied Chavin. Their fate was to go from police officer to inmate in ONE week, pretty much for just being there. That’s not fair. Expecting a cop on his first week to contradict their first field trainer is un-realistic, however much it may be technically what they are supposed to be willing to do. I suspect some if not all of those guys will get off the hook, hope so anyway.
Larry and Fred, 11 nanograms/ml is .000011 milligrams/ml. That’s far below the 2 milligrams/ml lethal level. That didn’t kill him. Lethal concentrations for other drugs are also in milligram concentrations rather than nanogram concentrations.
The average death dose was 9.96 ng/mL.
According to George Floyd’s toxicology report, his blood contained 11.0 ng/mL Fentanyl, plus 5.6 ng/mL norfentanyl, 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine, and three other drugs.
You need to get your facts right.
Average means very little in the case of intoxicants. The question is what degree of tolerance he had built up. If he was a new user then perhaps the dose might have contributed to his death. If he was a habitual user then it may have been unimportant.
A friend of mine who died of cancer told me that at one point he was taking enough liquid morphine to kill an elephant. His body had developed a tolerance for it.
TTG,
I notice neither you nor others have disputed that the one video mentioned in the comment I was responding to is not enough evidence to convict the accused officer.
Fred, YouTube requires one to sign in to see that video. I’m not signing in. I assume it was the video of Floyd struggling in the back of the police car or resisting getting place in the car. I’ve seen all those last year. I’m sure the full timeline will be examined in detail in the trials including the 8 minutes of 3 officers on Floyd’s back and neck.
I wouldn’t have commented at all if Larry’s post didn’t juxtapose blood level and dose level. It looked like a deliberate effort to obfuscate the two. Seems others thought the same thing. I also found that fentanyl blood concentrations leading to death ranged from 1 to over 100 ng/ml. The mean for addict deaths is 26.4. With that mix of drugs in Floyd’s blood, I would certainly say he was an addict.
TTG,
The video was widely distributed without sign-ins a year ago. It’s a major reason for the riots.
A little math: Assume 2mg is the total LD50/50 dose. (that which kills 50% of those who take it). Assume he weighs 100Kg (220lb). The body is mostly water so 1g ~ 1mL. 2e-3g/100e+3mL = 20e-9g/mL. Technically not lethal, but damn close and definitely an overdose. Enough so that in combination with any other normally benign condition or influence it could be deadly. The best a competent prosecutor could *possibly* argue is that they missed the signs of overdose. Given the circumstances it’s easy to see how they would. Murder charges seem like such an over reach that it helps the defense IMHO.
2mg’ s is a dose not a blood level. It’s comparing apples to oranges. No two people given the exact same dose and route of administration are going to achieve the exact same blood level. Blood levels for analgesia (pain relief) is 1-2ng/ml. For anesthesia (operative purposes) it’s 10-20ng/ml. When given for anesthesia you have to be ready to artificially support respiration. Blood concentrations of 7ng/ml or greater have been associated with fatalities where poly-substance use is involved. The above is only for pharmaceutical fentynal and doesn’t apply to non-pharmaceutical fentynal that can have increased potency or be laced with other drugs.
The average death dose was 9.96 ng/mL.
According to George Floyd’s toxicology report, his blood contained 11.0 ng/mL Fentanyl, plus 5.6 ng/mL norfentanyl, 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine, and three other drugs.
I believe it was reported Floyd “hooped” the fentanyl, which apparently is a direct dose into the rectum.
By-passing liver detoxification and the length of the upper GI tract, this would give the fentanyl a maximum and immediate effect. Street stuff. Maybe someone knows more.
Would anal consumption by-pass liver detoxification? I dont think it does. In the case of alcohol, anal consumption does increase intoxication speed, because it would hit the blood stream quicker. But the action of the liver in detox would be the same.
I hope Chauvin gets a fair trial and I hope that everyone who has to go to court gets a fair trial, I’ll bet he’s been offered many many plea deals and given it’s going to trial he didn’t take the bait. My understanding from reading the MPD manual portion pertaining to “how to restrain” is that Chauvin went by the book.
Larry Johnson stated the measurements and some folks want to quibble, aye yai yai.
My bias in this matter is as follows: George Floyd was a speedballer and an ex-con. It is in one of the three relevant videos that a police officer–the one shown here, I think, in the pix– asked him what was wrong. There was obviously something strange happening. You can see it in Floyd’s demeanor and in his complaints. He was sitting in one car. I think smoking dope, but refuses to get into a police vehicle because he was “claustrophobic.” Strange. Why? Because he felt he needed to keep moving? And he wanted to lie down on the ground. To stretch out? Floyd told the cop that he had been “hooping.” That is a prison term. Hooping is used by old timers to carry around prohibited items. You use the anus. You can also get a quick high hooping chrystal meth either in rock form or liquid or maybe some other form of speed up the old bunghole etc. ( I have been told that among Gotham yuppies a coffee enema is knarly.) He had driven across town wired as high as a kite. He may have sensed he was going into an OD and did what is generally done by speedballers, smoke some marijuana to bring you back down off the high. (I have been told that LURPs did this in Vietnam–go up the trail wired on speed and blow a lot of weed later on to get back into whack. Same thing with an ‘LA turnaround’ used by truckers. People tend to forget that we live in a drug culture.) What George Floyd didn’t realize is that during that week in Minneapolis there were at least six ODs, which surprisingly didn’t kill anyone. People were found on their porches or in their cars, they had simply fallen out and were dying if someone had not seen them. I have read a couple of news articles in the papers there. The Star?
Why was this happening? Because opioids are so powerful they can give ‘product’ more bang for the buck. My theory of the case is that George Floyd had either gone too far with the original hooping or he didn’t realize that he was adding more high when he smoked weed in the car when he thought he might be able to bring himself back down.
The marijuana you buy nowadays off the street can be deadly, that is my view. I commented about this to a girl here in the Ville who was bringing me my provisions and vino from Whole Foods. She had been blocked on Emmet Street, which is also Route 29 North, a major artery, by a demonstration. She was OK with that, though. She had a police story of a young friend who had a medical problem who died in custody up at Culpeper. She was sorrowful and angry about that and sounded as if she was familiar with the police officer responsible. So it was also personal, being from a small Virginia town. I found myself paying close attention to what she was saying. There were tears, but she was laughing as got back in her car, after my comments . “Anyway, we get our weed from California.” She added that it came in nice tinfoil packaging and was really good stuff. I think it is good that Virginia has now legalized marijuana. And it is amazing that at long last the death penalty seems to have been abolished. I can hardly believe it. Too late for some guys I got to know quite well.
Again, the false flag narrative sold in California – the police killed Floyd for passing a bad $20 bill. Talk like that is why our cities continue to burn down – while the Democrat media tosses gasoline on the flames.
They could actually report the facts and put an instant chill on the entire evolving scene. Plus use the incident for an excellent anti-drug teaching moment, tothat would “promote this country’s general welfare.”
Media needs to honor the gift of their First Amendment protections. Not debase them.
This spectacle, like all incidents that the MSM uses to keep us distracted & foaming at the mouth, is now Discussion Proof. We have, like Pavlov’s Dogs, each assumed one or the other polar opposite viewpoints and NOTHING, especially reality, is going to budge us from our dug-in positions. As the author’s post shows.
Yes – it’s true – neither the dead man nor his killer will ever be nominated as Time’s Man of the Year. And, yes, the deceased was out of his mind on multiple drugs. But at one point he was handcuffed and locked in the back seat of a squad car – where he was of no threat to anyone. And then they dragged him back out, tussled with him and then he ended up on the ground with a bulky cop kneeling on his neck till he gasped that he couldn’t breath and then went unconscious. A state he never recovered from.
This raises the obvious question: Why? Why didn’t they just drive him to the station & book him? And the only answer that makes any sense at all is that he hadn’t submitted yet. He hadn’t become “subdued”. He hadn’t acknowledged their authority. And for the thugs that make up a significant % of our police forces that was unacceptable. He MUST submit to their authority. Or else. And what we saw on those videos is Or Else in action.
The tragedy here isn’t Floyd’s murder that we all saw ourselves – it’s that his killer will get off hiding his rage behind the misinterpreted fine print of the PD regs. And the riots will resume fed by the MSM to keep us from looking at who’s really working to destroy this country.
This is what the protests were about (on then 1st day – before they got hijacked by organized forces with an agenda). And, obviously, defunding police depts is a deeply stupid idea. Whats actually needed is PD hiring procedures to weed out the ones that only want the job for the power it gives them over other people. Being a cop in the country in 2021 is a VERY hard job for people who are actually capable of “Serving and Protecting”. We can’t have a high % of thugs like Chauvin on the street AND make any progress at healing the divisions in this country.
I read a blog comment shortly after the incident by a person whose step son had died from a fentanyl overdose. He indicated that it is critical to have an overdosed person lying down placed on their stomach as this can be critical to being able to breathe. Not clear that the police officers knew this, but keeping Floyd on his stomach was important.
Placing a knee on the neck probably does not help breathing. One imagines that the officers will argue they were unaware of his intoxicated state.
My final comments. There are two autopsy reports. The first one released was performed at the request of Mr. Floyd’s family, and it found that Mr. Floyd had died as a result of homicide, and that there were no contributing factors. The second autopsy, performed by the Henepin County coroner and released shortly after the family autopsy, also found that Mr. Floyd died as a result of homicide, but that he had underlying health conditions and substances in his body which may have contributed to his death.
So all of this discussion regarding the amount of fentanyl which would be fatal ignores the reality that the only evidence which articulates the cause of death — the autopsies — both determine that the cause of death was homicide.
The jury will see the coroner’s autopsy report, and they may see the family’s independent autopsy report, and they most certainly will see the 8 minute, 46 second video of officer Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, while Floyd begged for his mother and the right to breath, and they will decide whether to believe the autopsy and the video, or to believe the defense argument that Chauvin was following police procedure and that Floyd actually died of a fentanyl overdose.
If this thread demonstrates anything, it is that it will be very hard to pick a jury. And we can all hope that the jury performs its duty thoughtfully.
Here is an article from Reuters which argues that the family autopsy may help the defense.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-autopsy-experts/floyd-family-autopsy-could-help-accused-policemans-defense-legal-experts-say-idUSKBN2391AM
Autopsy reports are subject to cross-examination. They do not provide stand alone evidence of anything. “Homicide” is not murder; nor even an appropriate legal finding for a capital offense when stated in an autopsy report.
Odd they are having such difficulties with the autopsy report for police officer death in the Jan 6 Capitol melee, when you state with great ease two reports immediately claimed “homicide” as the cause of death – which I believe were issued before the final toxicology reports.
Look up fentanyl overdose symptoms – “I can’t breathe” is a primary one. Was the officer on his neck or by his neck? Big difference.
This thread underscores the need for due process proceedings, confronting witnesses and the robust cross-examination of all expert testimony. We here are all but unsworn arm-chair babblers relying on third hand reports.
But agree, finding a jury of peers is the weak link in our current justice system. Mainly because so many relish in getting our of jury duty; rather than accepting this as a sacred but occasional obligation, if one wants to enjoy the benefits of our “exceptional” form of governance.
With all due respect, I try very hard never to say anything “with great ease.” But it is not difficult to find substantial agreement that both autopsies stated homicide as the cause of death. Your argument is with the medical examiners, not my presentation of findings in the autopsies.
You might also want to go back to the first or second comment in this thread, which reports that the Henepin County autopsy contained the toxicology information on the presence of fentanyl, norfentanyl, methamphetamines, and various compounds of cannabis. It would be difficult to produce an autopsy before a toxicology report which contains the toxicology report under discussion. Without the toxicology report, this thread would not exist.
You and I agree, Deap, that toxicology reports “are subject to cross-examination.” All relevant and admissible evidence, with the possible exception of a plea of guilty, is subject to cross-examination. On second thought, a plea of guilty is also subject to cross-examination by the judge accepting the plea. “Are you sure you really want to do this?”
I am done with this thread, except to the extent I am again accused of being facile with my statements. For those who would like to read a less facile article on the dueling autopsies arguments, I offer this:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-two-autopsies-of-george-floyd-arent-as-different-as-they-seem/