If somebody had tried to intervene in it, they likely would have been shot and killed, in addition to Floyd still being killed.
The broader media narrative would have been that the police had apprehended a man who was on drugs and/or had been involved in a home robbery when his friends tried to stop them.
The police would have been hailed as heroes and what is basically the right-wing narrative would have become the dominant one instead.
Exactly. Any resistance would have made it justified in the eyes of the public, even if the resistance was to being killed for selling cigarettes.