Derek Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. AG Keith Ellison has now added a second-degree murder charge.Derek Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. AG Keith Ellison has now added a...
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Officer Derek Chauvin Charged With Third-Degree Murder & Manslaughter
May 29, 2020 at 2:30pm
Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer who was seen in a
viral video kneeling on the neck of a black man named
George Floyd, sparking unrest throughout the city and outrage throughout the country, has now been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter in connection with Floyd’s death.
That’s according to Mike Freeman, the Hennepin County attorney.
Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington announced Chauvin’s arrest
to reporters on May 29.
“I am here to announce former Derek Chauvin has been charged by the Hennepin County attorney’s office with murder and with manslaughter,” Freeman said in a news conference later in the day. Watch his statement here.
He said Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. “We are in the process of continuing to review the evidence. There may be subsequent charges later. A detailed complaint will be made available…this afternoon. He’s in custody, and has been charged with murder. The investigation is ongoing,” said Freeman. The county attorney said that, even the previous afternoon, prosecutors were still waiting for information they needed to go ahead with charges. They now have that evidence, he said.
Asked about the other three officers at the scene of Floyd’s death, Freeman said, “We felt it appropriate to focus on the most dangerous perpetrator. This case has moved with extraordinary speed.” He called Chauvin’s action “this criminal action.” As evidence, Freeman said he has had discussions with an expert and has a preliminary report from the medical examiner, body camera video, and witness statements. The other three officers are “under investigation. I anticipate charges,” he said.
Chauvin was taken into custody by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. He’s not in the Hennepin County Jail, according to to jail records.
Chauvin was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis police force. Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng were the other three officers present, according to the city. All of the officers were fired after a video went viral of the incident. The disturbing video shows Chauvin with his knee pressed on Floyd’s neck even as bystanders plead with the officers to help Floyd. Floyd repeatedly says he can’t breathe and then goes silent.
Floyd was originally from Houston, Texas. He was known by the nickname “Big Floyd,” his Facebook page says. The Star-Tribune reported that the initial call came in for someone using a counterfeit bill at a store, Cup Foods, at 3759 Chicago Avenue. When police arrived, they believed Floyd matched the description and found him sitting on the hood of his car, according to the newspaper. Two videos have emerged showing earlier moments before Floyd was restrained.
According to KTSP-TV, both Floyd and Chauvin worked security at El Nuevo Rodeo club, according to the building’s former owner, Maya Santamaria. “Chauvin was our off-duty police for almost the entirety of the 17 years that we were open,” Santamaria said to the television station. “They were working together at the same time, it’s just that Chauvin worked outside and the security guards were inside.” She told KTSP that they “overlapped working security on popular music nights within the last year” but she can’t say for sure that they knew each other.
Here’s a video showing the earlier scene. The police body cam videos haven’t yet been released.
A community leader said during a press conference, standing next to the chief and mayor, that the death was a “lynching.”
“We are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Too many lives have been taken,” she said. “Yesterday what we saw was a black man who was lynched. They didn’t use rope. He used his knee. And that black man, Mr. Floyd, said I can not breathe. Minnesota prides itself on being progressive, and being the north, but this is the Jim Crow north and we demand justice.”
She said she was thankful to the chief and the mayor “for standing with us. We are standing together as a community. We are a collective, and we will not be divided. We are done dying.”
Heavy reached out to Tom Kelly, the lawyer for Chauvin, and his office said Kelly is not commenting right now on the case and that reporters should direct their questions to the Minneapolis Police Department. Lt. Bob Kroll of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis
told CBS Minneapolis: “Now is not the time rush to judgement and immediately condemn our officers. An in-depth investigation is underway. Our officers are fully cooperating. We must review all video. We must wait for the medical examiner’s report.”
According to CBS Minneapolis, in Minneapolis, “kneeling on a suspect’s neck is allowed under the department’s use-of-force policy for officers who have received training in how to compress a neck without applying direct pressure to the airway.” However, some police training experts told the station they believed the officer compressed Floyd’s neck for too long because he was under control and not fighting them.
Seth Stoughton is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of law, a former Florida police officer and co-author of a book called
Evaluating Police Uses of Force. He studies policing and how it is regulated. He spoke to Heavy at length about the case.
“I honestly don’t see a whole lot that went right,” said Stoughton of what he saw in the citizen video showing officers and Floyd.
He said Floyd appeared to be “unconscious for four minutes before Officer Chauvin got off his neck. It took the bystanders about 20 seconds to start saying he was non-responsive. … Officers are under an obligation to monitor the person they’re arresting. Saying we didn’t notice is not a good excuse. You should have. That’s your job. It’s one of the most tragic aspects of this case. I would be expecting officers to be monitoring his vitals, checking his pulse, making sure he has a heartbeat and is still breathing.”
He stressed: “They should have realized there was something wrong.”
What he saw in the video made Stoughton feel “appalled, absolutely appalled.” He continued:
What the officers did in this case was so far from what well-trained professional officers are supposed to do that it was appalling. It was infuriating. The highest priority in policing is supposed to be preserving the sanctity of human life. These officers gave every indication that they could care less about Mr. Floyd and his well-being. It’s simply not appropriate. Officers are under an obligation to protect individuals, including the individuals they arrest.
In the case of Floyd, he said, “The shin was across the neck the entire time. It was completely inappropriate. At one point, you see the officer shift very visibly to put more weight on the shin against the back of Mr. Floyd’s neck.”
He believes “there were multiple things done wrong; that is one of them.” The bigger problem with the police actions, in his opinion, was “keeping someone in a prone position for so long.” It’s a well-known phenomenon to law enforcement that putting a person “face down handcuffed can cause positional or compression asphyxia,” he said. “I would be shocked and appalled if the officers didn’t know about the risks of positional asphyxia. It’s a standard part of police training. After you handcuff someone, you get them out of the prone position, even if you don’t have a knee in their back.” He stressed, though, that the cause of death has still not been determined by the medical examiner and other evidence, both body camera video and non-video evidence, will also be important in understanding what happened to Floyd. You can read more details from Stoughton’s interview with Heavy
here.
Here’s what you need to know:
In the Troubling Video, Floyd Saying, ‘Please, I Can’t Breathe’ as the Officer Keeps His Knee Pinned on the Man’s Neck
VideoVideo related to officer derek chauvin charged with third-degree murder & manslaughter2020-05-29T14:16:45-04:00
A 10-minute video was posted to Facebook by a bystander. It paints an extremely troubling scene of what happened to Floyd. You can watch it above, but be warned that it’s very disturbing.
“Please, I can’t breathe. Please man. Please,” Floyd says, his voice anguished.
The officer, now identified as Chauvin, has his knee on the man’s neck against a squad car, as Floyd continues saying he can’t breathe. There is a second officer standing nearby at the scene and a third next to Chauvin, and bystanders grow increasingly distressed in the video at what they are watching.
“Why you got him down, man. Let him breathe at least, man,” says one bystander to the officers.
Floyd repeats again, several times, “I can’t breathe.” He added, “I can’t move. … My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. Please, please.”
“His nose is bleeding, c’mon now,” says a passerby. “You’ve got your knee on his neck,” says another bystander.
“How long you’ll gotta hold him down?” says a woman. “You can put him in a car,” says a man.
“That’s bullsh*t bro. … you’re f*cking stopping his breathing,” says a bystander.
People challenged the officer to just put the man in a car. The bystanders call the officer a “bum” and claim he’s stopping Floyd’s breathing.
Partway through the video, Floyd stops talking, but the officer keeps his knee on Floyd’s neck, the video shows.
“He’s not responsive right now,” challenges a bystander.
“Check his pulse,” demands a man.
The second officer, named as Tou Thao, sometimes interacts with the passerby. “Check his pulse. The man ain’t move yet, bro,” demands a bystander.
“He’s not f*cking moving. Get off of his f*cking neck,” the man yells. “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
“He’s black. They don’t care,” says a woman.
Paramedics eventually show up with a gurney after Floyd has gone silent for some time.
“The fact you guys aren’t checking his pulse and doing compression if he needs help?” says an upset woman.
“You just really killed that man, bro,” says a man to Chauvin, who appears unemotional and impassive throughout the video.
Only three officers can be seen in the video, one briefly and barely. However, a photo on Twitter from a different angle appears to show four officers:
The initial headline on the police press release stated, “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction.” However, top Minneapolis officials are becoming increasingly critical of the officer.
According to the Star Tribune, police spokesman John Elder said Floyd died at a nearby hospital a short time later. He “suffered a medical episode while struggling with officers,” Elder said a few hours after the incident occurred and said he appeared to be under the influence of either alcohol or another drug, the newspaper reported. However, Elder now says the chokehold was not a department-authorized technique, according to the newspaper, which quoted him as saying, “In my years as an officer, that would not be what I would ever consider a chokehold.”
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