The whole social phenomenon surrounding George Floyd's veneration and martyrdom is very interesting. He was literally a convicted felon for multiple crimes, one of which was home invasion where he held a gun up to a pregnant woman's stomach. The day of the incident he was passing counterfeit bills and acting erratic which prompted the call. The toxicology report showed he had fentanyl and meth in his system. The body cam footage started with him in the driver's seat of an SUV without ID, acting erratic and resisting arrest, and when first put into the back seat of the police car Floyd said he couldn't breath. Odds are he was probably already having a heart attack from the drugs, and then Chauvin's maximum restraint technique pushed him over the edge.

Objectively speaking, Floyd was a miscreant at best and almost certainly a net-negative in terms of benefiting society. A fair trial would have classified the incident as manslaughter, but since cities were literally burning and the jurors were publicly known, they were not at liberty to judge the case impartially. The transformation of Floyd into a martyr and the violent quasi-religious movement that followed will be a good case study for future historians.