The blame is squarely on the Police.

I’m not blaming anyone other than the police officers for the death of George Floyd. Yet I am wondering if his life could have been saved by someone physically intervening, instead of watching, pleading, or filming, which is what people did. Filming can provide an important record, when made public after the fact, of a wrongful death, such as that of George Floyd in Minneapolis or of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia. Filming may even discourage police brutality simply by the act of filming it. But at least in this instance, filming did not prevent a death. It only documented it. And no one took a risk to save a life.

Would I have risked police confrontation, arrest, and possibly a beatdown, to save George Floyd’s life? I don’t know. I’d like to think I would have. I’d like to think that if I had been there, I could have summoned up the courage to intervene, that I would have approached the police officer and asked him to take his foot off the handcuffed man’s neck, that I would have loudly insisted on it, and, if necessary, that I would have pushed the officer off of Floyd’s body, even knowing that I would be arrested for it and very possibly hurt in the process. But that’s all hypothetical, and I have no personal history of exhibiting such physical bravery. Of the people who were actually there, watching these tragic events unfold before their eyes, when there was an individual’s life that possibly needed saving, no one risked attack or arrest to save George Floyd.

Why was there no physical intervention?

Why did no one intervene – physically intervene – to save the life of a man who repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe? In Minneapolis today, people are confronting the police, some of them violently, but there is no life to be saved right now by doing so. When it counted, no one stepped up and took a risk. And I wonder why. Is it inherently dangerous to confront armed police? Of course, it is! That might be all the explanation that is needed, and that’s perfectly understandable. Or perhaps what passes for bravery nowadays is simply “witnessing.” Maybe witnessing will save lives in the future, but it won’t save them right now. Could George Floyd’s life have been saved by someone’s bravery, by someone willing to intervene, even at a risk to his or her own safety? We don’t know. We will never know. And yet it’s worth pondering.