Eric Nelson, the lawyer for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, is using the “reasonable police officer” as a standard for demonstrating why Chauvin’s actions in the homicide of George Floyd were not just reasonable, but non-negligent and should result in a not-guilty verdict from the jury.

According to Nelson, a reasonable police officer knows how control a detainee with an appropriate amount of force.  A reasonable police officer evaluates the individual’s demeanor and responds accordingly.  A reasonable police officer, he says, will take into consideration the safety of the individual, his fellow police officers and the gathering crowd.

He argues that a “reasonable police officer” has a different set of priorities than anyone else.

The problem:  what a currently accepted idea of a “reasonable police officer” does is very different than what a “reasonable human being” would do. 

A reasonable human being would understand that kneeling on the back and neck of another human being for more than nine minutes is unreasonable.  A reasonable human being would hear the people in the crowd–which included an EMT and a mixed martial arts instructor–telling him the detainee wasn’t breathing.  A reasonable human being would understand that a handcuffed person on his stomach on the ground was not an immediate threat to the officer.

And a reasonable human being would wonder why a man who was complaining that he couldn’t breathe fell silent after five minutes of you kneeling on his neck.

The problem with Chauvin and his defense is that he acted not as a reasonable human being or even a reasonable police officer.  He acted as an irrational, power-thirsty individual who had not just George Floyd under his knee, but all those people who were watching the scene unfold.