*The mayor of Petal, Mississippi is resisting calls to resign following his controversial remarks about the death of George Floyd.
On Tuesday, Mayor Hal Marx tweeted about the case, saying he “didn’t see anything unreasonable” by the use of excessive force on the victim during arrest for suspected forgery.
We reported earlier.. A young woman on the scene filmed the incident, showing Floyd handcuffed and on the ground with Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the back of his neck, and pleading: “Please, I can’t breathe.”
Chauvin ignores Floyd, even after he appears to lose consciousness, keeping his knee on the victim’s neck for nearly five minutes.
Four police officers were fired Tuesday in connection with Floyd’s death and the FBI is conducting an investigation into the incident.
But Mayor Marx believes the officers are “being crucified.”
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This is the response of Petal, MS Mayor Hal Marx to the lynching of George Floyd—giving the green light for police to kill black men/boys. @CNN @shaunking @donlemon pic.twitter.com/uoDXXClN14
— Kathryn Rehner-Sullivan (@rehnerkj) May 27, 2020
According to the Miami Herald, in now deleted tweets from May 28, Marx wrote: “Why in the world would anyone choose to become a police officer in our society today?”
As noted by BET.com, Twitter user Jason A. Darby responded, “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 fired back with: “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.”
After catching heat over his comments, Mayor No-Neck claimed his posts were misunderstood and that people should wait for all of the facts before jumping to conclusions and labelling him a Good ol’ boy racist.
Marx told to The Clarion-Ledger that Floyd’s death is unrelated to Officer Chauvin’s knee crushing the life out of him.
Speculation is that Minneapolis city officials are preparing to announce that Floyd’s death was drug related.
Meanwhile, following calls for his resignation on Thursday, Marx said he will “never surrender to the mob mentality.”
“I think that people are so quick to judge the police before they have all the facts,” Marx told the outlet. “I can’t say whether a crime was committed or whether they did anything right or wrong, all I’m saying is don’t rush to judgment based on what you see in that video.”
He continued: “I’ve seen too many cases before where the police were judged to be guilty in the public’s eye but later were found to be not guilty under the law. For sending that, all of a sudden I’m called racist, I need to have a knee put on my neck — all kinds of hateful stuff simply for having an opinion and asking people to get all the facts before they judge.”
Marx also took to Facebook Live to defend the race soldiers involved in Floyd’s death.
“The man’s death, Mr. Floyd, was a tragedy no matter what caused it,” he said. “We should mourn for his death, obviously, but let’s also wait for all the facts to get out before we condemn these police officers who may or may not have done anything wrong in this case. I do think unfortunately when race is involved, it makes things much more explosive than other issues. This really to me was not a racial issue but I see where African-American citizens, of course, consider it that and for good reason. I understand that.”
He continued: “I apologize to the people who may have thought I was trying to minimize this man’s life but I simply was trying to say these police officers deserve the benefit of the doubt until we find out more.”
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