This is an issue of deprivation of civil rights under color of law.
Supreme Court precedent has ruled, that the police have NO affirmative duty to protect the public.
So if you call 9-11 because an axe murderer is bashing your door in, and the cops decide they’d rather stop on the way at Dunkin Donuts, because they’re lard asses, and you die, your next of kin CANNOT sue.
But all of that changes, once you are in police custody.
If you are in police custody (being arrested and in cuffs qualifies) they are responsible for your well being.
In this case, the policeman is on video, holding his knee on the neck of a guy for nine full minutes nonstop. In public. On a video with no blank spots, no inconvenient splices, or anything, from just six feet away.
The guy passes out. Bystanders are begging the cop to get off and check the guy’s pulse. He doesn’t.
One of the other policemen, takes the man’s pulse, and finds NO pulse.
Mr. Kneecap, instead of performing CPR, even after a fellow officer told him the guy has no pulse, keeps his knee on the guy’s neck for over 2 1/2 minutes. Not rumor. ON VIDEO IN REAL TIME.
This openly, verbatim, explicitly satisfies both 3rd degree murder (which doesn’t require intent by state law, but “depraved indifference”) and manslaughter.
Mr. Kneecap is now in jail on $500,000 bond.
Who gives a rat’s rear end about race?
If they want to make it about race, good luck arguing them out of it, since “deprivation of rights under color of law” was used to go after the Klan.
But the Feds haven’t brought that charge ...yet.
The officers only defense would be battle fatigue, under the duress of constant combat with career criminals the average police officer could become just a little complacent at compassion for that version of human life.
The battlefield becomes the officers entire life, i have no true concept of what that would do to me, I think I would snap at some point.. or fall in to a full on survival mode where I could care less about "them"
Add to that a boiling political climate that favors "them" agianst your only protection within department management. Somewhere between a rock and a hard place.
it is entirely probable that it was not race related at all
In Rodney and in the recent Slager case, it was their ace in the hole charge. The Feds can bring it without a double jeopardy issue arising.