REVIEW - Floyd's Death Drives Overhaul Of Police Systems, Culture Worldwide

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th June, 2020) The police-custody death of George Floyd has sparked changes in many spheres of life, reigniting debates over the criminal justice system, including the use of chokeholds by officers and use of lethal weapons, prompting Amazon to ban police use of facial recognition software and even causing HBO to temporary remove the Oscar-winning epic Gone With the Wind.

Floyd died in hospital after he was detained in Minneapolis on May 25 over allegedly paying for cigarettes with a counterfeit bill. During the arrest, white police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the neck of the handcuffed 46-year-old for at least eight minutes before the detainee, who pleaded that he cannot breathe, became unresponsive.

Four police officers involved in the arrest were fired the next day, while Chauvin - who has a long list of complaints filed against him with the police department - was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

For a majority of Americans, this was clearly a cold-blooded murder. The US has now been gripped with violent riots for weeks to the point that several cities, starting with Minneapolis, have had to declare curfews and deploy police to the streets.

The rallies calling for "defunding the police" and "abolishing the police" made US authorities across all states review whether they desperately need so many law enforcement officers. The demonstrators are also calling for redirecting funds to other areas to help communities, such as education and housing. The protesters have been long gathering outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City calling on UN member states to pass resolutions compelling the US to reform the police.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti have said they are intent on shifting police funding to youth programs and social services. Authorities in Boston, Lansing and Seattle also vowed to consider police cuts. The Washington city council passed legislation on Tuesday that prohibits the hiring of police officers with a history of serious misconduct in other police departments.

A majority of council members in Minneapolis city pledged to disband the city's police department with a new community-led safety model.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress drafted a 134-page bill, which would make it easier to prosecute police officers for misconduct., ban chokeholds and carotid holds and restrict the use of lethal force by police. The bill, however, has to be also backed by Republicans.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, in France, the authorities announced that the country's law enforcement officers would no longer be allowed to detain alleged criminals in chokeholds.

The protests even affected the policies of tech giants like Amazon. The Seattle-based group has recently announced its decision to prohibit US police departments from using their facial recognition technology for one year to allow lawmakers to introduce regulations on its use. The decision by Amazon followed IBM's move also to stop selling its general purpose facial-recognition and analysis software.

According to Amazon, by its move, it is advocating that governments "should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology."

Amazon Web Services' Rekognition software is used by governments, media corporations and non-governmental organizations to zero in on customers, suspects and potential victims of human trafficking. According to the Tech Insider publication, the technology has been criticized for recognizing black people's faces with less accuracy than white ones'.

The company has long come under fire from a number of human rights groups who accused it of ties with police and the development of the controversial technology. Over 1,000 US police departments work with Amazon-owned Ring, a home security and smart home company.

PULLING OSCAR-WINNING FILM FROM HBO MAX STREAMING LIBRARY

The BLM protests even reached Hollywood and forced entertainment companies to grapple with the appropriateness of both current and past productions.

On Monday, HBO Max temporarily removed Gone With the Wind, the Oscar-winning 1939 adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's novel. The move comes the day after the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed written by screenwriter John Ridley who asked for the move to be taken off the platform since it "is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color."

Yet, Ridley's words and HBO's decision did not see widespread support as in 70 years the epic romance between Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler gained the heats of people worldwide.

"Here's a radical idea: Don't censor Gone With The Wind. Don't censor Blazing Saddles. Don't censor Quentin Tarantino. Don't censor ANYTHING," Senator Ted Cruz tweeted Wednesday afternoon.

The movie received 10 Oscars, including for the best film and best supporting actress played by Hattie McDaniel who became the first African American to win the academy Award. The film is considered the sixth-greatest American movie of all time by the American Film Institute.

"Born today [June 10th] in 1893: Hattie McDaniel, the first black actress to win an Academy Award for her role in Gone With the Wind. HBO removed her award-winning movie on what would have been her 127th birthday," US Congressman Paul Gosar tweeted.

A number of users on Twitter criticized the HBO's decision and pointed to the absurdity of the situation since erasing the film from the service even temporarily equals erasing the moment McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar and thus erasing Black History.

"The first black actress to win an Academy Award was Hattie McDaniel for her role in "Gone With The Wind." The Left has now decided to ban the movie from streaming services to 'cure racism.' Is this not just Hitler's book burning all over again?" California Republican Errol Webber tweeted.

The historical epic is not the only movie targeted by the BLM protests. Long-running reality series "Cops" has also been recently dropped by the Paramount Network after 33 seasons. The episodes of BBC's "Little Britain," a sketch comedy featuring a character in blackface, was also removed from its streaming service.

STATUES TOPPLED, DEFACED, TORN DOWN

After police, the fury of the demonstrators turned toward statues and monuments of US historical lawmakers who implemented policies viewed as racist by the protesters. The statues of Confederate General Williams Wickham and Confederate President Jefferson Davis has recently been toppled in a public park in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam vowed the removal of a state-owned statue of Confederate Gen. Robert Lee from Richmond's popular Monument Avenue, yet a court halted the removal for 10 days.

The latest victim of the protesters became Christopher Columbus as protesters recalled his treatment of the Indigenous communities during the violent colonization. His statues were toppled across the whole nation.

Not only the statues in the United States saw the wrath of the protesters. Over the weekend, Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists defaced the Cenotaph war memorial and a statue of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill. A statue in Bristol of 18th-century slave trader Edward Colston was torn down and thrown into the harbor by protesters.

In the wake of these events, London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced that the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm would review all monuments in the nation's capital to assess whether they reflect the city's diversity. The decision was met with mixed reviews. While many BLM activists hailed the decision, some questioned whether the mayor oversteps authority in the matter. On Tuesday, former member of European Parliament Steven Woolfe told Sputnik that Khan has "limited powers to deal with transport and policing" and they have "nothing to do with legislation that will impact upon the whole of the United Kingdom."

As the protests become more violent, President Donald Trump had to accentuate his rhetoric and denounced actions of "anarchists and radical leftists," in particular the radical Antifa movement, which he intends to designate as a terrorist organization.

Meanwhile, a number of politicians in Europe welcomed Trump's promises to ban Antifa. In Germany, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has thrown its support behind Trump's plans to classify the group as terrorists.

"The Antifa members are structurally hostile to democracy. Your left-wing extremist worldview is directed against the democratic constitution of our country as well as against the free market economy. The AfD Group therefore expressly welcomes President Trump's announcement and calls on both the EU and the Federal government to also act against this openly extremist terrorist group," Petr Bystron, the AfD group's chairman in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag, said on the party's website.

Jean-Lin Lacapelle, a European Parliament member of France's National Rally, also agrees that Europe should follow Trump's lead in banning Antifa.

"This is a new pandemic, political this time. I see the European far left congratulating itself on the fires and looting in the USA, in a totally irresponsible manner. Exacerbated communitarianism develops in these suburban populations. They want to import violence, kill the republic, our values, the state, capitalism and what do I know," Lacapelle told Sputnik.

FLOYD'S DEATH PRETEXT FOR LOOTING, PROPERTY DAMAGE

Many peaceful protests over police violence escalated into widespread riots and looting. Radicals at many rallies across the nation threw different objects, mostly plastic bottles of water and firecrackers, at security forces, with officers responding with stun grenades and tear gas.

Across the US, demonstrators were confronted by armed men, with some brandishing weapons and damaging property and some driving vehicles at crowds. Many businesses across the country, including those owned by African Americans, have suffered extensive damage from looting related to the protests.

On Sunday, a man drove his car into a group of George Floyd protesters in the northwestern US city of Seattle and opened fire from his vehicle, injuring a person. Also, over the weekend, another man drove a car into protesters in the US southeastern state of Virginia. Later, local authorities confirmed that the perpetrator in Virginia was an "admitted leader" of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan group.

Margo Parker, a former European Parliament member for Britain's East Midlands, believes that that the situation with policing in the United States did warrant considerable attention, although the ensuing violence following the killing of Floyd had no justification when it came to looting and attacks on bystanders.

"What happened to George Floyd was terrible. Of course, it's terrible, it's unforgivable. It was quite unforgivable also for this guy's family to have to keep seeing that footage (of Floyd's death) on the news. It's a terrible thing but what followed isn't good for black people either. The points they are making are absolutely trashed by yet more violence and it's not helpful at all," she told Sputnik.

According to her, one violent act merely "begets" another violent act and now it is up to the Americans to put the laws to make sure that type of policing has to stop.

"Just because something absolutely appalling happened doesn't make it right to go out looting, damaging property and abusing people who had nothing to do with this," she added.

EVERY PARTY INVOLVED TALKING ABOUT SAME ISSUES WITH DIFFERENT ANGLES

Meanwhile, in social movement research, there are many discussions about certain blurred lines when free speech can turn into hate speech or when a peaceful protest can turn into a riot, Dr. Atef Said, professor of sociology and teaches social movements and revolution at the University of Illinois at Chicago told Sputnik.

"One way to look at this is the war/struggle of framing, every party involved is talking about the same issues from different angles. Social movements contentions are fought on the street and also in the media," he said.

According to the expert, while there is an emphasis in the study of movements on the idea that non-violence works, violence is, in actual fact, "complex in reality."

"Sometimes protestors use "unarmed collective violence" to protect themselves. The media always focus and exaggerate any minor violence from protestors, but not the violence of the state," he said.

He recalled that US law enforcement is not the only force in the world that uses violence to counter protesters.

"Not only US police force, but many regimes even in so-called western democracies use violence. The culture of violence is integral part of politics today. Police is almost militarized globally," he concluded.

He stressed that every single protest or revolution or movement is unique by virtue of its historical moment.

"Actors in the new movements seem to realize that free speech is meaningless without guaranteeing the right to protest and freedom of organizing. They want more than free speech or simple recognition in politics, but real change," he explained.

He noted that the protesters now speak about defunding the police and state violence, which is a radical demand, but also a lesson of history.

"Actors in the new movements such as BLM [Black Lives Matter] also are critical of the patriarchal nature of old movements. The new movements embrace intersectionality and radical and queer approaches to organizing," he concluded.