I follow military doings in a 'boy's own" sort of way. I noted that this "event" when it happened last year. The article points up a couple of approaches common to contempoary journalism when covering violent and cowardly "urban" murder:
Barely literate morons with weapons beyond their technical comprehension is the usual context of these shootings. Minds too small to even consider negotiating over sneakers, life and death. Just pull da trigga! And repeat the N-word endlessly, yet yell "racism" if any other breed dares to speak it.
But well-trained leftists know Portland has a "police violence" problem.
I really have appreciated Richard Cheverton’s sharp, funny and well researched writing on topics of vital interest our once beautiful and envied city, for instance:
- the boondoggle foisted upon us by the Charter Commission and our citizens’ complicity in voting for it;
- the mindboggling amount of money for “homelessness” over the course of several years and the explosion of the homeless-services-industrial-complex with so little to show for it (also courtesy of us voters);
-the officially-condoned drug use that has exploded in just these last years (uh-oh - us voters, at it again.)
Soon I hope to read something about Multnomah County plopping a day center for the homeless right in the middle of downtown’s hotel and entertainment district. (I was down in that area last week - it looks like Night Of The Living Dead ((right for outside of the Living Room Theater…it would be funny is it wasn’t so not funny)). I’d like to read Richard Cheverton’s thoughts on that - nobody in Portland today
is telling these stories better than him.
But somehow Portland Dissent seems to have devolved into a bunch of white people dishing about black people. I did not see any black people stumbling around and talking crazy last week on 10th & Oak (saw lots of white folk doing it though). I don’t think the majority foisting ill-considered ballot measures on the region are black. Come on, fellow white folks! Can’t we stay in our lane and talk about issues again in which we are in position to do something about?
If not, okay. I will miss Richard Cheverton though 😘
"I did not see any black people stumbling around and talking crazy last week on 10th & Oak (saw lots of white folk doing it though). I don’t think the majority foisting ill-considered ballot measures on the region are black. Come on, fellow white folks! Can’t we stay in our lane and talk about issues again in which we are in position to do something about?"
That reads like sarcasm compared to your apparent grasp of the other problems you listed.
Plenty of blacks come to downtown Portland and shoot people, typically each other. There was the notorious Patrick Kimmons case and It ramped up noticeably after BLM inspired the riots. Look up the shooter names at Silver Dollar Pizza, various nightclubs, etc.
Most of the black-on-black killing occurs in N, NE and SE Portland, so citing a specific intersection will always miss the bigger point.
One of the worst experiences I had in Portland was around 2017 while riding my bike near dusk. Two gang-style blacks who looked very out of place were hassling people in Sellwood Park. I came up behind them in a narrow southbound exit from the park, and when my light beamed on them from behind they launched into gibberish talk about it being "da police" and "get dat sh-t off me." When I passed them, I feared getting shot, but I was fed up and told them what they were. After that, I rode like the devil to get out of there.
Another time, pre-Floyd, I was near the Lloyd Center mall and heard a volley of shots from the main parking garage maybe 500 feet west. Nearby Portland zombies barely flinched, as if it was a normal afternoon, but I took fast cover behind a wall. This was another clue that something was deeply wrong with many people in this town. I looked up the news that night and no one had been hit, but cops said it was probably a gang-related shooting.
Multiply the above by thousands of cases and you have the problem every race needs to get honest about.
Anonymity gives a lot of license- it always seems to devolve in online forums into rudeness and name-calling. Larry, come on! You think you do but you know nothing about me. Perhaps you will meet me someday. You might be embarrassed about the assumptions you’ve made about me.
The human race supposedly started in Africa. It wouldn’t be surprising if your ancestry DNA turned up some Nigerian and Somali as mine did. Human beings tend to get around. They don’t stay in lanes. They screw around with one another.
Does anyone around here NOT know that race is one of the prime engines of the progressive machine--starting with that pernicious dog-whistle, "equity?" Did you not read the words of the Charter Commission (or their ghost-writers, the Coalition of Communities of Color) that one of their prime motives was the creation of a minority-specific district...and failing that, to make sure that minorities have a disproportionate shot at electing members based on race?
Is she not aware that $-millions are being funneled into shadowy non-profits on the basis of nothing more or less than race?
Are you not aware that race was behind 100 days of riots--and that BLM turned out to be a scam? That race is the "lens" through which education decisions are made by our education monopoly?
Are you unaware of the dismal statistics of black-on-black murder and crime?
Are you unaware of how minority pols use race as a substitute for debate?
And that's just the short list...
PS: I've seen many POC in tents...at least in my part 'o' town.
BLM is literally the biggest threat to black lives this century, since it targets the police who save far more blacks than they kill. "Unjust" death by cop (formerly known as suicide by cop) mainly happens when dangerous people resist arrest and make cops fear for their own lives. They use preemptive force to preserve themselves, just as any survival-oriented homeowner would if Floyd types barged in with guns.
You've probably seen Heather Mac (with a space) Donald go into detail on that topic. She gets banned from speaking by the usual crime-deniers.
I recall years ago listening to a NPR interview between Scott Simon and Elvis Mitchell, a black film reviewer. For some reason they were discussing the history of lynching of black Americans in the South. Elvis brought up that the leading cause of death amongst young black Americans is other young black Americans not white racists. My Mother used to have an expression about 'Minding your own yard.'
I was pleased when Scott Simon left Public Radio for a career in television but I guess the old adage that you have a face for radio held true because like a bad penny he was back with his annoying voice.
This is the most perfect piece of writing that has appeared here. It deserves to be read on a much larger stage as does all of what Fitzsimmons writes.
The construction, the flow, the word choice, the pace, and the tone while never calling attention to the writer herself is what makes it brilliant: truth in Portland has never had so vital an advocate
Excellent piece of writing! I've lived in Lew Fredrick's District as long as he's been a State Senator. So easy to focus on the police and not on black men killing black men. Portland's one political party of consequence is unfortunately completely uninterested in Public Safety and it shows.
No one in Portland's prog-media has the guts to point out the truth that stares them in the face. Sounds like it's time for another Oregonian hit piece on Ms. Fitzsimmons.
Politicians in Portland, white or black, don’t care about these young black men who are dying and killing each other. It’s horrible what has happened since 2020, when the Gun Violence Reduction Team was canned.
Law and order is a necessity in EVERY culture. Sooner or later these politicians are going to learn that.
The irony isn’t lost on me that a black politician was responsible for dismantling the violence reduction team.
The Oregonian had an article today that homicides are down this year so far. When they take out people three at a time we will probably stay at the high rate we’ve been at for the past two years
Just...wow: “a fentanyl addict who died in police custody.” How about that for a quaint way of putting things. Tips the reader off to the writer’s perspective right up front.
Haven't you noticed that fentanyl's lethality is widely reported and undisputed now? It's said to kill about 100,000 in America each year, often mistaken for other pills.
The Chauvin trial would have had a fairer medical-evidence discussion if Floyd's arrest had happened within the past year. It was preordained in 2020 that his knee was the only big factor, not Floyd's bad heart or fentanyl. The woke won an easy scapegoat but black guys keep getting killed by their true nemeses.
I wrote it that way with great deliberation. Fact: George Floyd had a violent felony history. At the time of his death he had ingested fentanyl and was resisting arrest.
Before the cops arrived, the clerk at the store went out and tried to get Floyd to return the cigarettes he had purchased. He declined. Had he simply returned them, the matter would have ended there. But the “gentle giant” did what he wanted.
Had I sat in judgment on Derek Chauvin as a juror, I would have held out for negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter. It looked like Chauvin was trying to use pressure points to control Floyd. Unfortunately, the crowd surrounding him and screaming added confusion and fear to the situation.
There is no way Chauvin committed premeditated murder. The black Attorney General, Keith Ellison — with assistance from the usual agitators — hyper-politicized Floyd’s death. The media amplified the pile-on.
What does it say about America that we would elevate a man like George Floyd to hero status? What does it tell young black males?
I was hoping D.C. would someday win a retrial, but his recent tax evasion conviction further condemned his pubic reputation. He seems to have be driven to fudge taxes by the obvious loss of income after that fateful arrest.
It's almost certain Mr. Floyd did some shady stuff with taxes along the way. We'll also never know if he may have killed one of his own people at some point. But that wouldn't have lessened his martyr status, just like the Patrick Kimmons case. What sane city would repeatedly eulogize a gang thug?
I wrote this a couple of years ago on my website. What Derek Chauvin needed was an attorney like the late Charles Garry, who represented the Black Panthers. Garry would have seen righteousness in Chauvin’s case:
Chauvin will not likely live to see it, but history will judge him differently. Future generations studying the disintegration of America will look at what happened to him and wonder how Americans could turn a man like George Floyd into a beloved hero.
Your truth. One thing I notice online is there is a lack of recognition that more than one thing can be true at the same time. One truth - George Floyd did not die of a drug overdose.
He had a bad heart and was on fentanyl. You can't simply ignore than to tow a woke line. Being large and seemingly strong, the cops likely misjudged Floyd's tolerance for knee pressure, which is not an illegal hold.
BLM had been cherry-picking police incidents for years (while blacks kept killing each other routinely) and they finally struck funding gold in this case.
If Floyd had home-invaded your own place, like he did to a woman in 2007, and you (and spouse, etc.) managed to get him on the floor, odds are high you wouldn't let up with a knee if you felt him still resisting. Police face that scenario every day, with crowds of cop-haters agitating them.
Find a long YouTube interrogation of officer Tou Thao., who got 42 months in prison for simply keeping an eye on gang members in that crowd (any trace of responsibility for Floyd's death was punished). Thao spoke of how combative the crowd was, which could have distracted Chauvin from Floyd's condition, along with his cry-wolf "I can't breathe" claim when they tried to put him in an SUV earlier. The case was far from cut and dried as knee-only.
Again...more than one set of “facts” can be true at once. Let me ask you this: if it was your son, regardless of his failings, would you condone someone kneeling on his neck for almost 8 minutes while he begged for his life? And then condone it celebrated in disingenuous commentary? The level of bile expressed in our civic discourse is at the heart of our national divisiveness.
Like many families today, I have lost relatives to drugs. It wouldn’t surprise me if George Floyd’s mother hadn’t entertained the possibility of him dying an untimely death.
What I’m sure she wasn’t counting on was a $27 million payout. Would she give it all back if the gods offered to rewind the clock and take Derek Chauvin’s knee off of Floyd while trying to restrain him?
I’m guessing she would be as willing to return that money as Floyd was to return the cigarettes he bought with a counterfeit bill.
As for bile, the scars left on downtown Portland aren’t the result of any discourse at Portland Dissent.
Are you aware that the Medical Examiner of Hennepin County ruled that Floyd's primary cause of death was fentanyl intoxication?
The hyper-political state AG yanked the case from the aging, white elected DA and handed it over to (an almost entirely white) team of private lawyers who were much more interested in scoring points than seeking justice.
They simply shopped for another opinion, something real prosecutors should not do!
There was little chance of an unbiased verdict, given the potential for more Antifa/BLM riot damage$. The verdict seemed like a foregone financial choice, more than anything evidence-based.
Chauvin himself not testifying was also a blunder, since it allowed the media to keep him framed as a silent white devil. The whole thing played out like a movie directed to set a certain tone.
Now who’s putting words in one’s mouth? The statements Pamela made about George Floyd are 100% accurate. I’m not sure what additional context you are trying to add which changes any of that.
Floyd committed suicide via choosing to become a dangerous and strong-arm thieving dope fiend. Eventually dope overthrew his body as it had his reason. Moreover, as has been pointed out the ugly crowd adding to the confusion did not help to prevent his suicide.
The much martyred Mr Floyd's posthumous influence contributed to the recent murders of the black Portland trio as well as to the light sentences of the black murderers should they prove too young for adult court.
The three gents murdered the other day might have been killed by bullets, but they too, I suspect, were drug suicides albeit of a different type.
Thank you for writing about this triple murder. It made me very sad to read about how young these 3 males were. High school students didn’t use to be gunned down in the middle of the day.
Black on black murders continue unabated and it appears many black leaders want to ignore the reality of the situation.
I follow military doings in a 'boy's own" sort of way. I noted that this "event" when it happened last year. The article points up a couple of approaches common to contempoary journalism when covering violent and cowardly "urban" murder:
https://popularmilitary.com/dutch-shocked-after-police-hide-image-of-indianapolis-man-arrested-for-shooting-commando-in-back/
Barely literate morons with weapons beyond their technical comprehension is the usual context of these shootings. Minds too small to even consider negotiating over sneakers, life and death. Just pull da trigga! And repeat the N-word endlessly, yet yell "racism" if any other breed dares to speak it.
But well-trained leftists know Portland has a "police violence" problem.
Ummm….nah!
I rest my case.
...and, Sue, it's good to have you as a reader and commenter. Truly.
I really have appreciated Richard Cheverton’s sharp, funny and well researched writing on topics of vital interest our once beautiful and envied city, for instance:
- the boondoggle foisted upon us by the Charter Commission and our citizens’ complicity in voting for it;
- the mindboggling amount of money for “homelessness” over the course of several years and the explosion of the homeless-services-industrial-complex with so little to show for it (also courtesy of us voters);
-the officially-condoned drug use that has exploded in just these last years (uh-oh - us voters, at it again.)
Soon I hope to read something about Multnomah County plopping a day center for the homeless right in the middle of downtown’s hotel and entertainment district. (I was down in that area last week - it looks like Night Of The Living Dead ((right for outside of the Living Room Theater…it would be funny is it wasn’t so not funny)). I’d like to read Richard Cheverton’s thoughts on that - nobody in Portland today
is telling these stories better than him.
But somehow Portland Dissent seems to have devolved into a bunch of white people dishing about black people. I did not see any black people stumbling around and talking crazy last week on 10th & Oak (saw lots of white folk doing it though). I don’t think the majority foisting ill-considered ballot measures on the region are black. Come on, fellow white folks! Can’t we stay in our lane and talk about issues again in which we are in position to do something about?
If not, okay. I will miss Richard Cheverton though 😘
"I did not see any black people stumbling around and talking crazy last week on 10th & Oak (saw lots of white folk doing it though). I don’t think the majority foisting ill-considered ballot measures on the region are black. Come on, fellow white folks! Can’t we stay in our lane and talk about issues again in which we are in position to do something about?"
That reads like sarcasm compared to your apparent grasp of the other problems you listed.
Plenty of blacks come to downtown Portland and shoot people, typically each other. There was the notorious Patrick Kimmons case and It ramped up noticeably after BLM inspired the riots. Look up the shooter names at Silver Dollar Pizza, various nightclubs, etc.
Most of the black-on-black killing occurs in N, NE and SE Portland, so citing a specific intersection will always miss the bigger point.
One of the worst experiences I had in Portland was around 2017 while riding my bike near dusk. Two gang-style blacks who looked very out of place were hassling people in Sellwood Park. I came up behind them in a narrow southbound exit from the park, and when my light beamed on them from behind they launched into gibberish talk about it being "da police" and "get dat sh-t off me." When I passed them, I feared getting shot, but I was fed up and told them what they were. After that, I rode like the devil to get out of there.
Another time, pre-Floyd, I was near the Lloyd Center mall and heard a volley of shots from the main parking garage maybe 500 feet west. Nearby Portland zombies barely flinched, as if it was a normal afternoon, but I took fast cover behind a wall. This was another clue that something was deeply wrong with many people in this town. I looked up the news that night and no one had been hit, but cops said it was probably a gang-related shooting.
Multiply the above by thousands of cases and you have the problem every race needs to get honest about.
Frankly, you read rather like a sterotypical white woman. I suspect myself of not being a white folk of your ilk.
Your comment below has a plaintive missed the boat quality:
"Can’t we stay in our lane and talk about issues again in which we are in position to do something about?"
Anonymity gives a lot of license- it always seems to devolve in online forums into rudeness and name-calling. Larry, come on! You think you do but you know nothing about me. Perhaps you will meet me someday. You might be embarrassed about the assumptions you’ve made about me.
Perhaps. I think not. Do apolgise If I've been rude. But, I am not of your ilk.
On the subject of Portland I am pretty shameless. Of course, if ever introduced we might melt into a puddle of mutual shame.
I was in a fever when I wrote "stereotypical." Then, shamelssly I hurled "plaintive." I blush for myself.
Anonymity is required to put some space between myself and Antifa/BLM. I''ll stay out of this article from here on out.
White folks? Stay in our own lane?
I’m an American mutt. What lane would that be?
The human race supposedly started in Africa. It wouldn’t be surprising if your ancestry DNA turned up some Nigerian and Somali as mine did. Human beings tend to get around. They don’t stay in lanes. They screw around with one another.
Sue:
Does anyone around here NOT know that race is one of the prime engines of the progressive machine--starting with that pernicious dog-whistle, "equity?" Did you not read the words of the Charter Commission (or their ghost-writers, the Coalition of Communities of Color) that one of their prime motives was the creation of a minority-specific district...and failing that, to make sure that minorities have a disproportionate shot at electing members based on race?
Is she not aware that $-millions are being funneled into shadowy non-profits on the basis of nothing more or less than race?
Are you not aware that race was behind 100 days of riots--and that BLM turned out to be a scam? That race is the "lens" through which education decisions are made by our education monopoly?
Are you unaware of the dismal statistics of black-on-black murder and crime?
Are you unaware of how minority pols use race as a substitute for debate?
And that's just the short list...
PS: I've seen many POC in tents...at least in my part 'o' town.
BLM is literally the biggest threat to black lives this century, since it targets the police who save far more blacks than they kill. "Unjust" death by cop (formerly known as suicide by cop) mainly happens when dangerous people resist arrest and make cops fear for their own lives. They use preemptive force to preserve themselves, just as any survival-oriented homeowner would if Floyd types barged in with guns.
You've probably seen Heather Mac (with a space) Donald go into detail on that topic. She gets banned from speaking by the usual crime-deniers.
My personal thoughts - a triple homicide of young black males and the lead up to such a tragedy is worth discussing.
I recall years ago listening to a NPR interview between Scott Simon and Elvis Mitchell, a black film reviewer. For some reason they were discussing the history of lynching of black Americans in the South. Elvis brought up that the leading cause of death amongst young black Americans is other young black Americans not white racists. My Mother used to have an expression about 'Minding your own yard.'
Scott Simon. Always figured him for a mother's favorite
I was pleased when Scott Simon left Public Radio for a career in television but I guess the old adage that you have a face for radio held true because like a bad penny he was back with his annoying voice.
Simply marvey clip included:
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2020/07/beneath-the-planet-of-the-bedlamites-2.html
This is the most perfect piece of writing that has appeared here. It deserves to be read on a much larger stage as does all of what Fitzsimmons writes.
The construction, the flow, the word choice, the pace, and the tone while never calling attention to the writer herself is what makes it brilliant: truth in Portland has never had so vital an advocate
Excellent piece of writing! I've lived in Lew Fredrick's District as long as he's been a State Senator. So easy to focus on the police and not on black men killing black men. Portland's one political party of consequence is unfortunately completely uninterested in Public Safety and it shows.
No one in Portland's prog-media has the guts to point out the truth that stares them in the face. Sounds like it's time for another Oregonian hit piece on Ms. Fitzsimmons.
Politicians in Portland, white or black, don’t care about these young black men who are dying and killing each other. It’s horrible what has happened since 2020, when the Gun Violence Reduction Team was canned.
Law and order is a necessity in EVERY culture. Sooner or later these politicians are going to learn that.
The irony isn’t lost on me that a black politician was responsible for dismantling the violence reduction team.
The Oregonian had an article today that homicides are down this year so far. When they take out people three at a time we will probably stay at the high rate we’ve been at for the past two years
Just...wow: “a fentanyl addict who died in police custody.” How about that for a quaint way of putting things. Tips the reader off to the writer’s perspective right up front.
Haven't you noticed that fentanyl's lethality is widely reported and undisputed now? It's said to kill about 100,000 in America each year, often mistaken for other pills.
The Chauvin trial would have had a fairer medical-evidence discussion if Floyd's arrest had happened within the past year. It was preordained in 2020 that his knee was the only big factor, not Floyd's bad heart or fentanyl. The woke won an easy scapegoat but black guys keep getting killed by their true nemeses.
I wrote it that way with great deliberation. Fact: George Floyd had a violent felony history. At the time of his death he had ingested fentanyl and was resisting arrest.
Before the cops arrived, the clerk at the store went out and tried to get Floyd to return the cigarettes he had purchased. He declined. Had he simply returned them, the matter would have ended there. But the “gentle giant” did what he wanted.
Had I sat in judgment on Derek Chauvin as a juror, I would have held out for negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter. It looked like Chauvin was trying to use pressure points to control Floyd. Unfortunately, the crowd surrounding him and screaming added confusion and fear to the situation.
There is no way Chauvin committed premeditated murder. The black Attorney General, Keith Ellison — with assistance from the usual agitators — hyper-politicized Floyd’s death. The media amplified the pile-on.
What does it say about America that we would elevate a man like George Floyd to hero status? What does it tell young black males?
I was hoping D.C. would someday win a retrial, but his recent tax evasion conviction further condemned his pubic reputation. He seems to have be driven to fudge taxes by the obvious loss of income after that fateful arrest.
It's almost certain Mr. Floyd did some shady stuff with taxes along the way. We'll also never know if he may have killed one of his own people at some point. But that wouldn't have lessened his martyr status, just like the Patrick Kimmons case. What sane city would repeatedly eulogize a gang thug?
I wrote this a couple of years ago on my website. What Derek Chauvin needed was an attorney like the late Charles Garry, who represented the Black Panthers. Garry would have seen righteousness in Chauvin’s case:
https://www.heldtoanswer.com/2021/04/americas-new-n-word-cops/
Chauvin will not likely live to see it, but history will judge him differently. Future generations studying the disintegration of America will look at what happened to him and wonder how Americans could turn a man like George Floyd into a beloved hero.
Plain and accurate writing. Admittedly, It does give one a start so seldom is it encountered.
Truth is tough for the delicate psyche.
Your truth. One thing I notice online is there is a lack of recognition that more than one thing can be true at the same time. One truth - George Floyd did not die of a drug overdose.
He had a bad heart and was on fentanyl. You can't simply ignore than to tow a woke line. Being large and seemingly strong, the cops likely misjudged Floyd's tolerance for knee pressure, which is not an illegal hold.
BLM had been cherry-picking police incidents for years (while blacks kept killing each other routinely) and they finally struck funding gold in this case.
If Floyd had home-invaded your own place, like he did to a woman in 2007, and you (and spouse, etc.) managed to get him on the floor, odds are high you wouldn't let up with a knee if you felt him still resisting. Police face that scenario every day, with crowds of cop-haters agitating them.
Find a long YouTube interrogation of officer Tou Thao., who got 42 months in prison for simply keeping an eye on gang members in that crowd (any trace of responsibility for Floyd's death was punished). Thao spoke of how combative the crowd was, which could have distracted Chauvin from Floyd's condition, along with his cry-wolf "I can't breathe" claim when they tried to put him in an SUV earlier. The case was far from cut and dried as knee-only.
Truth: Before George Floyd encountered Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020 he was a regular fentanyl user and had used the day he resisted arrest.
You are certainly free to believe Floyd’s own behavior had nothing to do with how his life turned out and how it ended.
Again...more than one set of “facts” can be true at once. Let me ask you this: if it was your son, regardless of his failings, would you condone someone kneeling on his neck for almost 8 minutes while he begged for his life? And then condone it celebrated in disingenuous commentary? The level of bile expressed in our civic discourse is at the heart of our national divisiveness.
Like many families today, I have lost relatives to drugs. It wouldn’t surprise me if George Floyd’s mother hadn’t entertained the possibility of him dying an untimely death.
What I’m sure she wasn’t counting on was a $27 million payout. Would she give it all back if the gods offered to rewind the clock and take Derek Chauvin’s knee off of Floyd while trying to restrain him?
I’m guessing she would be as willing to return that money as Floyd was to return the cigarettes he bought with a counterfeit bill.
As for bile, the scars left on downtown Portland aren’t the result of any discourse at Portland Dissent.
Are you aware that the Medical Examiner of Hennepin County ruled that Floyd's primary cause of death was fentanyl intoxication?
The hyper-political state AG yanked the case from the aging, white elected DA and handed it over to (an almost entirely white) team of private lawyers who were much more interested in scoring points than seeking justice.
They simply shopped for another opinion, something real prosecutors should not do!
There was little chance of an unbiased verdict, given the potential for more Antifa/BLM riot damage$. The verdict seemed like a foregone financial choice, more than anything evidence-based.
Chauvin himself not testifying was also a blunder, since it allowed the media to keep him framed as a silent white devil. The whole thing played out like a movie directed to set a certain tone.
Now who’s putting words in one’s mouth? The statements Pamela made about George Floyd are 100% accurate. I’m not sure what additional context you are trying to add which changes any of that.
...and please do not put your words in my mouth. I do not condone drug use.
Implicitly, I am afraid that you do.
Floyd committed suicide via choosing to become a dangerous and strong-arm thieving dope fiend. Eventually dope overthrew his body as it had his reason. Moreover, as has been pointed out the ugly crowd adding to the confusion did not help to prevent his suicide.
The much martyred Mr Floyd's posthumous influence contributed to the recent murders of the black Portland trio as well as to the light sentences of the black murderers should they prove too young for adult court.
The three gents murdered the other day might have been killed by bullets, but they too, I suspect, were drug suicides albeit of a different type.
Thank you for writing about this triple murder. It made me very sad to read about how young these 3 males were. High school students didn’t use to be gunned down in the middle of the day.
Black on black murders continue unabated and it appears many black leaders want to ignore the reality of the situation.
Just so sad.