Positional Aphyxiation, vs. a Knee on the Neck - and why it makes a difference (and why you pencil necked twerps need to get it right...)

A knee across the neck will not (except for very rare circumstances, or circumstances involving deliberate impact, not simple pressure) cause death. 

The death in Minneapolis was NOT caused by a knee on the neck. 

It was caused by positional asphyxiation. 

They are two different things.   They are two very technically different things, and the differences are fairly technical and specific.   But they are also fairly simple - and extremely important. 

Because you can say you "accidentally" put a knee on the "wrong part" of the back, and it slipped onto the neck. 

You can NOT say that you left a man, face down, chest muscles seized due to skeletal-muscular constriction/positioning, for seven and a half minutes..."accidentally". 

One, a knee on the neck, can be claimed to be bad training, or an accident. 

The other, positional asphyxiation, is murder.  Plain.   Simple.  Murder. 

When you handcuff the hands behind the back of most people (save contortionists, professional athletes with above average flexibility, and the double jointed of shoulder) - you cause tension across the pectoral muscles due to the position the arms are in behind the back.  The muscles in the chest (not just the pectorals, but also the connecting muscles and those surrounding the lungs) are stretched and held taught.  

As long as the person is sitting up, or standing, or even laying on their back or side... little issue is had.  Because the force of their inhalation and exhalation, using the muscles of the nasal passage or throat are enough to force oxygen (and the other gasses in air) down the passageway and into the lungs, and exhale the "used" air. 

So the person continues to breathe.  And thus, they continue to live.   This is anatomy of restraint 101.  It is put much more simply in law enforcement Academies across the globe - "Handcuff him, search him, sit him up, search him again, stand him up, search a third time, then toss him in the car/tank/cell/van/holding room".   One smooth, unending process that moves the arrestee from on the ground, handcuffed (where you want him to be after he shows even the slightest resistance), to a controlled position.  And along the way, provides for searching him in multiple positions (so you can be sure you got in all the nooks and crannies), and makes sure he never spends a significant amount of time in a position where he has pressure on his lungs. 

When you handcuff someone behind their back (again, their chest muscles tighten and the muscles around their lungs tighten too), and then put them on their front... you are adding their body weight to the strain that they have to fight in order to breathe.  And they have to fight it, using nothing but those (relatively weak) muscles in the nose, throat and mouth.  Because the lungs are tightened, and now they're also compressed...and the body weight is not only making it harder to take in breaths, his body weight is compressing his lungs a little bit further down every single time he exhales.   So over time, anyone...even the skinniest fuck in the world...is going to start breathing shallowly, struggling to get enough air, and gasping.  They are going to panic, because that is what the brain does when you are low on oxygen.   

And guess what?   Panic?   It burns even more oxygen.  And it causes muscle tremors, which makes it even harder to take a breathe in, because now your muscles don't want to obey you anymore.  They're exhausted from the labor of taking hard breaths up against the heavy weight of your own body...and now they're also trembling from panic, and only receiving about half of the signals your brain is sending them (because panic is overwhelming and blocking the other half of them).  

That is what happens to a relatively healthy adult, cuffed behind his back, laid on his chest on a hard surface for any period of time.   When you do it to someone who is somewhat overweight (as George Floyd seemed to be), in a tight restricted space that limits how much you can move as you struggle to breathe (as George Floyd was), you are officially heading for positional asphyxiation. 

Let me be clear on that.   Positional - meaning "of the position".   Asphyxiation, meaning "asphyxia, or loss of breath or ability to breathe".   Positional Asphyxia, loss of the ability to breathe due to the position you are in.  

Now add 220lbs of asshole, plus 30lbs of his tactical gear (those duty belts are heavy guys, and police kevlar body armor is no lightweight joke either) - putting his weight on you.  It doesn't matter where his weight is - if it's on the upper body, it's contributing to your panic, to the restriction of your muscles' ability to move/draw in air, and to your limited mobility.   

Feeling a little anxiety reading it?   A tight little nervous feeling in the back of your throat that isn't quite a smile, isn't quite a grimace, but it feels...bad?   That's the little voice of panic.   And you're feeling it just reading this.   I'm feeling it just writing it. 

George Floyd felt it, a hundred times worse, for the last seven and a half minutes of his life.  

Some of you say that a knee across the neck killed him. Some of the media is spreading that story, too.   It's because it's easy to understand, easy to point to.  But it's wrong, and it leaves open a way of changing the story that a defense attorney can grab onto.   A knee across the neck is a technique that police officers stopped using in the 1960's, because it was found to potentially cause spinal injury or add to...wait for it...positional asphyxia.  Not because it "cuts off blood flow" (it doesn't, sorry, not without a lot better technique than most cops have...Brazilian Ju Jitsu guys don't even go for that kind of move).  Not because it "looks bad".   But because it contributes to injuries and issues.   

But a knee to the back of the neck is a "bad technique".   It can be defended, legally and morally, by saying the officer in question was badly trained.   Or he used a technique he was taught by a bad teacher.  Or he used a poor application of another technique.  

None of those things are true. 

The officer kneeled on George Floyd, and it was his weight on top of the man, who was already struggling to breathe, which killed him.   It was his failure to move the man out of a bad physical position, after arrest, move him into the sitting position, or into the cruiser WHICH HE WAS ALREADY UP AGAINST, which lead to the man's death.  

And that's not a bad technique.   That was a choice  That's murder.  

And that is why it's so important to be clear on the difference.  One is a bad technique that can be defended, if badly and disgustingly.   The other is a choice, that led to murder.