Originally Posted by Bob21 View Post

Mission146, I’m going to completely disgree with you here. I hear people make this type of argument all the time about police being held to “a higher standard”. I don’t think most people even know what they mean when they say that. They’ve just heard it so much, they start repeating it. It sounds like something intelligent to say.

Police will and should always be treated differently then regular Joe for doing the same things to a civilian/criminal. A policeman’s job is to arrest criminals. This is not the job of a civilian.

If civilian was doing a neck restraint move to Floyd, then the civilian should much more accountable for doing this to another person then a policeman. I mean civilians are not supposed to restrain another civilian with a neck restrain move. It’s that simple.

Like it or not, policemen are supposed to do this move when confronted with a criminal resisting arrest. At least if they are trained by the liberal police dept in Minneapolis.

So what Chauvin was doing was part of his job. He was doing what he was trained to do. Now where he is in trouble is that he pushed it too far. He did the neck restraint move on a criminal to the place where the criminal died.

The jury needs to decide if Chauvin took it too far. Most people who’ve seen the video would say yes.

But let’s not pretend civilians are going to be treated the same as police for doing the same thing to a civilian/criminal. If you believe this, you don’t understand the job of a policeman.

Same with Rodney King incidents. 5 civilians should not be beating a criminal with batons. But this is acceptable behavior for policemen who are trying to subdue a criminal resisting arrest. I’m not making the laws, I’m just saying at the time of Rodney King’s arrest, the policeman were just following their training. That’s why they weren’t convicted.

Why is it so hard for people to understand policeman and civilians will always be treated differently under the law when something happens to a criminal, since they have very different functions in our society.

I’m in no way saying police brutality is okay. It’s not. I’ve had a friend take the police to court for this. It just so happened this guy was white, so police brutality happens to white people too.

No doubt about it, there are some bad policeman out there. I’m shocked anybody would think all 800,000 policeman are all good...or there is some policy to make almost a million people perfect. It’s not going to happen. Basic stats should tell you some have to be bad.
I certainly know what I mean by it. If they commit a crime in the course and scope of their duty, they face a stricter criminal penalty. Yes, they have certain things they can do that are crimes in the context of a civilian, but not in that of an officer; I'm saying when they do commit a crime, the penalty should be more harsh. But, the law doesn't say that right now, so it is what it is.

I also agree with you on the jury. Like I said, the legal process is what it is and should work for him the same as it would anyone else. I think jury selection is going to be one hell of a messy affair on this one!