roy - // I would feel sadder about this man's death if he wasn't part of the dregs of society. //
The problem with that as a position, is that it removes the rights of the police to do their job impartially and with fairness to everyone, which I am sure you would agree is the system we would want to live with as a civilised society.
The minute you start introducing a 'qualification' to one person's right to fair and appropriate treatment, over another person, is that you have to judge each and every situation on that basis.
Who then decides that prisoner A is a model guy, so gets tea and scones, but prisoner B is a right piece of work, so he gets the rubber hose in the cell block?
You see the difficulty? Every police officer, and solicitor and QC and judge, has to temper their approach on the basis of who, and who does not deserve fair and just treatment.
If everyone is doing that on an individual basis, then you have chaos, because everyone's view of what is or is not 'deserved' is individual as well.
That's why we draw the line - everyone gets treated with the same fairness as everyone else, and then everyone can be judged fairly when the facts are in and heard and decided on.
But if Mr Floyd is getting rougher treatment because he is 'part of the dregs of society', then where does that stop?
If I were a police officer, I would ban every single driver I ever saw coming out of a pub and getting into a car to drive, because that's my personal bench mark, and under your system, that's fine, I get to do that.
But I would rather operate under a strict and impartial set of rules so that everyone in society is treated the same way, because that's the only way a civilised society can operate.
What do you think?