‘8:46’ becomes symbol of brutality
MINNEAPOLIS: All protest movements have slogans. George Floyd’s has a number: 8:46
Eight minutes, 46 seconds is the length of time prosecutors say Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was pinned to the ground under a white Minneapolis police officer’s knee before he died last week.
In the days since, outraged protesters, allies and sympathetic companies have seized on the detail as a quiet way to honour Floyd at a time of angry and sometimes violent clashes with police. Even as prosecutors have said little about how they arrived at the precise number, it has fast grown into a potent symbol of the suffering Floyd – and many other black men – have experienced at the hands of police.
In Boston and Tacoma, Washington, demonstrators this week were laying down on streets staging “die-ins” for precisely 8 minutes, 46 seconds. In Houston, churchgoers held candles and bowed their heads in silence, experiencing the crawl of time.
Viacomcbs, owner of MTV and Nickelodeon, stopped its programming earlier this week to air a silent, sombre video honouring Floyd for 8 minutes, 46 seconds.
Google asked employees to pause on Wednesday for the nearly 9 minutes of silence “as a visceral reminder of the injustice inflicted on Mr Floyd and so many others”, Google and Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai said in a letter to employees.
“Our black community is hurting, and many of us are searching for ways to stand up for what we believe, and reach out to people we love to show solidarity,” he said.
Pausing for a full 8 minutes, 46 seconds helps turn the abstract into a reality, said Monica Cannon-grant, the founder of Violence in Boston Inc, which organised a Tuesday protest that included the minutes of silence.
“You find that that’s an extremely long time to have someone have their knee in the side of your neck,” Cannon-grant said.
As she observed the silence, she said she found herself thinking about the safety of her family.
“All kinds of things were going through my head,” she said. “Mainly that I was the mom of four black sons and I’m married to a black man.”
The source of the number is clear, although the calculation behind it isn’t. The criminal complaint charging former officer Derek Chauvin in Floyd’s murder concludes that Chauvin “had his knee on Mr Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in total. Two minutes and 53 seconds of this was after Mr Floyd was non-responsive”.
“Police are trained that this type of restraint with a subject in a prone position is inherently dangerous,” it reads.
But the timestamps in the document’s detailed description of the incident, much of which is caught on video, indicate a different tally. Using those, Chauvin had his knee on Floyd for 7 minutes and 46 seconds, including 1 minute and 53 seconds after Floyd appeared to stop breathing.
Prosecutors involved in the case have not responded to requests about the discrepancy.
In this case, one minute is unlikely to be major legal significance.
“Seven minutes is a long time to have a knee on someone’s neck regardless,” said Jared Fishman, a former federal civil rights prosecutor. That said, Fishman said it’s a detail defence lawyers would scrutinise in court. | AP