This White Man Killed by Police Won’t Get George Floyd Attention

CLAY: Serious story out there that I don’t think is gonna get very much attention, although arguably, given what happened with George Floyd, it should. And this is a tough story, and many of you may not have heard about it at all, but it comes from Los Angeles.

We’re reading from the Daily Mail. They have the video up. It is a difficult watch. Buck, you sent this to me earlier today so that I could watch it and prep for the show. I’m just gonna give you a rough outline of the story here: A 38-year-old man named Edward Bronstein died on March 31st of 2020, a little over two months before the George Floyd incident. Footage of his death was just released by the police department in Los Angeles yesterday after his family sued so that they could see the video surrounding his death.

This 38-year-old man, by the way, father of two, was pulled over for suspicion of drunk driving. And they were trying to take blood from him to determine whether or not he was drunk. And he was forced onto a mat in the police station garage, he was handcuffed, five L.A. police officers then kneeled on his back while they put the needle in to extract blood. His family says that he had an incredible fear of needles. He screams, “I can’t breathe” 11 times before eventually going silent. This is a really hard tape to watch.

Buck, you and I, from the moment the George Floyd video went public, we are, first of all, defenders of police in general. We need more police. We need as talented of people as possible willing to take on the job of police. But sometimes police, like people who have every sort of profession under the sun, behave in ways that may well be illegal. And when that occurred, there needs to be charges that are brought.

What is devastating about watching this video is this man, 38-year-old again, Edward Bronstein. He’s a white guy — same thing happens to him that happened to George Floyd, and this was over two years ago. The tape is just now coming out.

When we talk about larger police issues, I think oftentimes when race is made the primary focus, it misses the larger story. Buck, you look at the data from the Washington Post. Seventy-five percent of people who are killed by police every year are white, Asian, or Hispanic. I think that data stuns people. Stuns people when they hear that 75% of people who are killed by police are white, Asian, and Hispanic.

And so what will be interesting is as this lawsuit progresses and given the fact that this video is now out and the man is saying basically the same exact thing that George Floyd said, will a white man being knelt on by five different police officers in Los Angeles, will this be a story at all? Will there be any marches? That there was any discussion about this in the larger cultural sphere?

BUCK: The law enforcement agency involved here was California Highway Patrol. And they were the ones that then fought the release of this tape. And we, honestly, we could play just the audio for you. It’s bone-chilling. I mean, it’s horrifying. This guy, Bronstein, now deceased, he’s a father, there’s a photo on the Daily Mail, you see little daughter, he is screaming for his life and screaming “I can’t breathe.

BUCK: 11 times — the exact same thing that George Floyd was screaming. Now, the video of George Floyd was taken by bystanders that got out there sooner. I understand that there are some differences here in the situation.

Now, Clay and I thought this is a story you should know about because, first of all, the narrative immediately with George Floyd — it wasn’t so much that it was a case of police brutality, it’s that it was a case of racist police brutality. That was assumed right away. And when you actually understand more about cases across the country — Clay mentioned the Washington Post numbers — what you find is that, yeah, there are cops who cross the line, there are cops who do bad things. But law enforcement in general in America is actually not racist.

CLAY: And the left and the Democrats, progressives run with this narrative at the first opportunity, and they don’t ever stop to look at the facts. I mean, here you see that this police restraint of a shoulder on the back or the neck in some circumstances clearly can be fatal for people, and it wasn’t just something that happened to George Floyd, it happened to this individual Bronstein before the George Floyd incident, just to be clear.

And then to have the we have part of — this will not result in marches. This will not be BLM, a national phenomenon that we all have to talk about and have a long conversation about police violence or anything else because it doesn’t fit the racial component, and it doesn’t have that narrative heft from the left. They will not care about this story. They will not care about police violence in this case.

Five officers involved. No charges brought against any of the officers, so far. The LA County coroner’s office ruled that this man, Bronstein, died, quote, “As a result of acute methamphetamine intoxication during restraint by law enforcement,” very similar to the argument that the police officers put forward in the George Floyd case, which was Floyd was under the influence of drugs and that was what caused his death, not the actions of the police officers. That was the defense.

So in this situation the five officers not charged and the L.A. County coroner’s determination that the drugs caused the death, not the police officers’ actions, has been accepted without any argument to the contrary.

Now, maybe with the video out, reminder, this happened before George Floyd, happened in March of 2020, and, Buck, it’s interesting to think about how different, how different George Floyd situation might have been covered if this Bronstein video had been public at the time. Because one of the primary arguments — you remember this — of Black Lives Matter was, this would never have happened to a white guy.

BUCK: They say it all the time. All the time. That was not true.

CLAY: Not true.

BUCK: In fact, one of the only pieces I ever had go viral when I worked at TheHill.com was about a shooting in Arizona, and there’s another horrific video of a guy who’s clearly — he did nothing wrong, nothing illegal. He was in hysterics because someone had called almost an accidental swatting, had called law enforcement onto the scene.

He had a BB gun — totally legal for him to have — someone thought it was a rifle, and police, two of them with long guns see him in the hallway and are shouting commands at him and just start shooting this guy. Because he didn’t comply quickly enough.

CLAY: Oh, I watched that. He’s on his knees

BUCK: That’s right. He was saying, “Cross your legs. Now crawl,” and the kid goes to pull up his shorts, and he’s got two guns trained on him, and one of the officers just — they did bring murder charges, but I think the jury got it wrong. The jury found that the officer was not guilty of murder in that case. But these things do happen, is the point. And it happens to people regardless of race, ethnicity, or background, but that’s not the narrative the left ever wants to tell.

CLAY: And most of you will never hear about this story. The Edward Bronstein story. My prediction — maybe that will turn into a big story. I bet that most of you will not hear a single word about this story in mainstream media at all because it challenges the narrative that this was a race based murder, which is what was said about George Floyd and remains to be seen what’s gonna happen to these California Highway Patrol officers and also whether there will be any sort of consequences as a result of these action.

But we just wanted to share it with you because it’s a larger picture of what goes on in a day-to-day basis. And, by the way, I’m not sure there’s any show that supports police officers more. And, Buck, if you talk to police officers, nobody hates a crooked cop or a bad cop more than a good cop, because they paint all police officers in a bad light.

BUCK: Makes their jobs harder, puts them at greater risk, strains relations with the committee, cops do hate dirty cops and for anyone who says, oh, Buck that’s not true, well, I worked at the NYPD intelligence division. You know what one of the interesting statistics was? Over 90% of internal affairs complaints come from other cops.

CLAY: It’s a great stat.