angrymnk wrote:
gbaji wrote:
There also was not enough time for someone to pass out from lack of oxygen. He was unconscious in about 15 seconds (less I think, but I haven't actually timed it). It was not the hold that caused this.
Gbaji, allow me to ask this, because I am sure we are all dying to know. Are you a doctor that you instantly tell us what it was not?
Does one need to be a doctor to know that it takes more than 15 seconds to pass out from lack of oxygen? I thought that was pretty common knowledge.
If I said that it could not have snowed yesterday because the temperature was in the 90s all day long, would you respond by asking me if I'm a professional meteorologist? How about if I pointed out that the moon isn't actually made out of cheese? Would I be challenged because I'm not an astrophysicist? No? Why do you even entertain this line of thinking?
If you think I'm wrong, then say you think I'm wrong and present some reason why you think I'm wrong. Can you do that? Isn't that what matters here? We all know that you can't asphyxiate in that short a time period. Not possible. Even having the wind knocked out of you with no ability to inhale afterwards, while uncomfortable, will not result in death in the time period in question. It just doesn't. Not for 99.99% of the population on Earth it doesn't. Hence why I keep pointing out the whole issue about what a reasonable person would or should expect. No one could possibly have expected that he would die as a result of those actions over that brief a period of time.
It was a fluke accident. One that you could not repeat if you did the exact same thing to the next 100,000 people you tried to arrest. You just can't charge someone with a crime for something like that.
Can we look at trying to make police take down procedures even more safe to cover for the edge cases like this? Sure. Maybe. Of course, you have to weigh the harm to police from using less harsh methods against the incredibly rare possibility that a subject might die, but we can look at that. But before we do any of that, we should actually be more rationale about the cause of death here. Making the whole thing about a choke hold, when it's almost certainly not the choke that killed him, will not result in anything productive. If the objective is actually to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. If the objective is to make hay today at the expense of the next victim, then talking about choke holds and police abuse is the right way to go.
