George Floyd is Eric Gardner

So a fairly large black man with preexisting medical conditions gets put in a restraining neck hold by a cop with a history of bad behavior, after being accused of a relatively mundane criminal charge. During the course of events, the suspect complains that he cannot breath, eventually the suspect loses consciousness, then loses his pulse, and eventually dies.

If this description of events surrounding George Floyd sound familiar, it's because the exact same thing happened in New York, with man we should remember named Eric Gardner. The difference appears to be that the Floyd was restrained with a knee to the neck, while Gardner was restrained with an jui jitsu choke hold.

For comparisons, the four officers who were associated with the death of George Floyd were immediately fired and criminal charges were filed against all four within a week. In the New York case, only the officer who administered the choke (Daniel Pantaleo) was fired, and nobody from NYPD was charged with a crime. 

What caused such an social outburst that seems wildly extreme in comparison to previous similar events (Eric Gardner, Freddie Gray, Mike Brown)? Especially considering the much more aggressive firings and criminal charges being brought almost immediately. Three things stand out to me:

• The first being the fact that we have not had a major race riot for nearly three years, when we had been having them much more consistently. It's been nearly three years since the Charlottesville riots, and there was probably a pent up demand for people to protest something racial. 
• Second, the pandemic lock downs probably had everyone on edge. People were frustrated and angry and this provided many people with an outlet to lash out. Who knows how much of the looting had to do with people not having money to actually buy things.
• Third, there is much less overall condemnation for the violence, and in fact there was actual support and justification provided by many leaders for the violence and riots. This is likely due to the knee jerk requirement for the mainstream political class to contradict whatever Trump does. Trump is against burning down cities. That means that liberals must be for burning down cities. 

So the other question that needs to be posed is what exactly makes this particular situation so much worse from a legal standpoint? What makes a knee on a neck worthy of five counts of felony murder and four counts of manslaughter against the four officers at the scene in Minneapolis, vs a Jiu Jitsu rear naked choke hold that was worthy no criminal charges and only the officer who administered the choke being fired? 

There seems to be fairly large disconnect and hypocrisy in regards to the handling of this. Whether that be the idea that charging everyone with murder is an overreaction, or not charging anyone was an underreaction. In Minneapolis we have two officers with less than a week on the job, still in training, now fired and charged with aiding and abetting murder. In New York, even the guy who administered the choke was not charged? 

Maybe it's just me... but I have a hard time reconciling this.