Earlier this week, Darnella Frazier was awarded an honorary Pulitzer Prize for her decision to videotape the attack and subsequent strangulation of George Floyd on a Minneapolis street.
Frazier deserves great credit for her action. However, there were a few other bystanders on the sidewalk who watched this killing unfold, but did nothing.
This is a question that has bothered other cops, bystanders, ethicists, and many people who saw the video. The bystanders, including eh other police who stood there watching, had more than nine minutes to act while Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in his death, knelt on his neck.
At Chauvin’s trial, Frazier said: “It’s been nights, I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life,” a tearful Frazier told jurors at the trial. But what about the other bystanders?
So, here is a question for ethicists and others: If you were a bystander to the police attack on George Floyd, would you have left the sidewalk and pushed the cop off of Floyd in order to save his life. Would you have done this even though you knew you would be arrested?
What would you have done?
Answer below.
