黒人死亡事件でミシシッピ市長「息ができないと言える人間は息ができている」と白人警官を擁護

A Mississippi mayor is facing serious backlash after posting several comments on social media platforms concerning the death of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who died in police custody Monday evening after an officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.

In videos of the fatal encounter that quickly went viral, a white police officer was shown sharply pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck while he was handcuffed and not moving on the pavement. Various cries protesting the officer’s conduct can be heard, all of which went ignored.

Floyd, who is black, was suspected of using a forged $20 bill on Monday evening. He could repeatedly be heard crying out, “I can’t breathe,” before he eventually lost consciousness.

The officers involved in the horrific incident were fired on Wednesday, but mayor Hal Marx of Petal, Mississippi, took a different approach, defending their actions in a series of since-deleted tweets.

“Why in the world would anyone choose to become a #PoliceOfficer in our society today?” he tweeted Tuesday evening, along with hashtags “#backtheblue” and “#ThinBlueLine,” local news outlet WLBT3 reported.

After a user responded that it would be “nice to get a few in there that understand reasonable force, when it’s needed, and don’t give the rest of them a bad reputation,” Marx doubled-down on his defense of the Minneapolis officers and baselessly speculated about the cause of Floyd’s death.

“If you are talking about the incident in MN, I didn’t see anything unreasonable. If you can say you can’t breathe, you’re breathing. Most likely that man died of overdose or heart attack. Video doesn’t show his resistance that got him in that position. Police being crucified,” he tweeted.

Marx reiterated his stance in a Facebook post later that same evening.