MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minneapolis police chief testified Monday that now-fired Officer Derek Chauvin violated departmental policy — and went against “our principles and the values that we have” — in pressing his knee on George Floyd’s neck and keeping him down after Floyd had stopped resisting and was in distress.
Continuing to kneel on Floyd’s neck once he was handcuffed behind his back and lying on his stomach was “in no way, shape or form” part of department policy or training, “and it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values,” Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said on Day Six of Chauvin’s murder trial.
Arradondo, the city’s first Black chief, fired Chauvin and three other officers the day after Floyd’s death last May, and in June called it “murder.”
While police have long been accused of closing ranks to protect fellow members of the force charged with wrongdoing — the “blue wall of silence,” as it’s known — some of the most experienced officers in the Minneapolis department have taken the stand to openly condemn Chauvin’s treatment of Floyd.
As jurors watched in rapt attention and scribbled notes, Arradondo testified not only that Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the force, should have let Floyd up sooner, but that the pressure on Floyd’s neck did not appear to be light to moderate, as called for under the department’s neck-restraint policy; that Chauvin failed in his duty to render first aid before the ambulance arrived; and that he violated policy requiring officers to de-escalate tense situations with no or minimal force if they can.
“That action is not de-escalation,” the police chief said. “And when we talk about the framework of our sanctity of life and when we talk about our principles and the values that we have, that action goes contrary to what we are talking about.”
Arradondo’s testimony came after the emergency room doctor who pronounced Floyd dead said he theorized at the time that Floyd’s heart most likely stopped because of a lack of oxygen.
Dr. Bradford Langenfeld, who was a senior resident on duty that night at Hennepin County Medical Center and tried to resuscitate Floyd, took the stand as prosecutors sought to establish that it was Chauvin’s knee on the Black man’s neck that killed him.
Langenfeld said Floyd’s heart had stopped by the time he arrived at the hospital. The doctor said that he was not told of any efforts at the scene by bystanders or police to resuscitate Floyd but that paramedics told him they had tried for about 30 minutes and that he tried for another 30 minutes.
Under questioning by prosecutors, Langenfeld said that based on the information he had, it was “more likely than the other possibilities” that Floyd’s cardiac arrest — the stopping of his heart — was caused by asphyxia, or insufficient oxygen.
Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death May 25. The white officer is accused of pressing his knee into the 46-year-old man’s neck for 9 minutes, 29 seconds, outside a corner market where Floyd had been arrested on suspicion of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill for a pack of cigarettes.
Floyd’s treatment by police was captured on widely seen bystander video that sparked protests around the U.S. that descended into violence in some cases.
The defense has argued that Chauvin did what he was trained to do and that Floyd’s use of illegal drugs and his underlying health conditionscaused his death.
Nelson, Chauvin’s attorney, asked Langenfeld whether some drugs can cause hypoxia, or insufficient oxygen. The doctor acknowledged that fentanyl and methamphetamine, both of which were found in Floyd’s body, can do so.
The county medical examiner’s office ultimately classified Floyd’s death a homicide — a death caused by someone else.
The report said Floyd died of “cardiopulmonary arrest, complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” A summary report listed fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use under “other significant conditions” but not under “cause of death.”
Prosecutor Steve Schleicher noted that while some people may become more dangerous under the influence of drugs or alcohol, some may actually be “more vulnerable.” Arradondo agreed and acknowledged that this must also be taken into consideration when officers decide to use force.
Before he was pinned to the ground, a frantic Floyd struggled with police who were trying to put him in a squad car, saying he was claustrophobic.
Arradondo said officers are trained in basic first aid, including chest compressions, and department policy requires them to request medical assistance and provide necessary aid as soon as possible before paramedics arrive.
“We absolutely have a duty to render that,” he said.
Officers kept restraining Floyd — with Chauvin kneeling on his neck, another kneeling on Floyd’s back and a third holding his feet — until the ambulance got there, even after he became unresponsive, according to testimony and video footage.
The officers also rebuffed offers of help from an off-duty Minneapolis firefighter who wanted to administer aid or tell officers how to do it.
Langenfeld testified that for people who go into cardiac arrest, there is an approximately 10% to 15% decrease in survival for every minute that CPR is not administered.
Nelson noted on cross-examination that department policies direct officers to do what is reasonable in a given situation. He asked whether officers need to take the actions of a crowd into account, and Arradondo agreed. Nelson has suggested that onlookers — many of whom were shouting at Chauvin — might have affected officers’ response.
Nelson also questioned whether Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s neck, playing a few seconds of bystander video side-by-side with footage from an officer’s body camera that Arradondo agreed appeared to show Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s shoulder blade.
But prosecutors quickly got Arradondo to note that the clip played by Nelson depicted only the few seconds before Floyd was moved onto a stretcher.
Minneapolis police Inspector Katie Blackwell, commander of the training division at the time of Floyd’s death, also took the stand Monday.
She said Chauvin, whom she’s known for about 20 years, received annual training in defensive tactics and use of force, and would have been trained to use one or two arms — not his knee — in a neck restraint.
“I don’t know what kind of improvised position that is,” she said, after being shown a photo of Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck.
She said Chauvin also was a field-training officer, receiving additional training so he would know what prospective officers were learning in the academy.
The city moved soon after Floyd’s death to ban police chokeholds and neck restraints. Arradondo and Mayor Jacob Frey also made several policy changes, including expanded reporting of use-of-force incidents and attempts to de-escalate situations.
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Find AP’s full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd
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Webber reported from Fenton, Mich.
EXPLAINER: Was officer’s knee on Floyd’s neck authorized?
CHICAGO (AP) — A critical factor for jurors to consider at a former Minneapolis police officer’s trial in George Floyd’s death is whether he violated the department’s policy on neck restraints when he knelt on Floyd’s neck.
The Minneapolis Police Department banned all forms of neck restraints and chokeholds weeks after Floyd’s death, but at the time of his May 25 arrest by Derek Chauvin and other officers, certain neck restraints were permitted — provided certain guidelines and conditions were followed.
Here is a look at the policy, which was a focus of testimony Monday, and how it could factor into a verdict for Chauvin, who is charged with murder and manslaughter:
WHAT NECK RESTRAINTS DID MINNEAPOLIS POLICE AUTHORIZE?
The department policy, in place for at least eight years at the time, divided permissible neck restraints into two categories, according to court filings and testimony Monday by the city police chief, Medaria Arradondo. Neck restraints were defined in the policy as a “non-deadly force option.”
One, called a “conscious neck restraint,” was for light pressure applied to the neck to help control a person without rendering unconsciousness. It was permitted for a person actively resisting.
The other was an “unconscious neck restraint,” in which officers could use their arms or legs to knock out a person by pressing carotid arteries on either side of the neck, blocking blood flow to the brain. The policy called for it to be used only for a person “exhibiting active aggression” or actively resisting when lesser attempts to control the person had failed or were likely to fail.
Police guidelines also instructed officers, at the first possible opportunity, to turn people on their sides once they were handcuffed and under control to avoid “positional asphyxia,” in which breathing becomes labored in a prone position and can lead to death. The city had pledged to emphasize to officers the dangers of positional asphyxia as part of a $3 million settlement in the 2010 death of David Smith. Minneapolis officers subdued Smith with a Taser and pinned him face down on the floor for several minutes with their knees on his back.
Training manuals also instructed officers to be attentive to whether a suspect was having difficulty breathing. Chauvin and the other officers never turned Floyd on his side, even as he said he couldn’t breathe 27 times before his body went limp.
WHAT DO ATTORNEYS SAY?
Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson, in a pretrial filing, said Chauvin followed policy and “did exactly as he was trained to do.” The filing included a photo in department training materials of a trainer with a knee on the neck of an instructor playing a suspect.
Prosecutors have already put supervisory officers on the stand to testify that, even if Chauvin pinning Floyd with his knee fell within policy, doing so for 9 minutes, 29 seconds did not. In their pretrial filing, they said Chauvin and two other officers held their positions for four minutes after Floyd lost consciousness — and two minutes beyond when he no longer had a pulse.
Witnesses also testified to the danger of Floyd’s position and to frequent department training on the importance of moving someone as quickly as possible into a recovery position. The photo included in Nelson’s filing included text that read: “Place the subject in the recovery position to alleviate positional asphyxia.”
Prosecutors highlighted video from Officer Thomas Lane’s body camera on which he can be heard suggesting to Chauvin after Floyd lost consciousness that he be turned on his side, showing that Lane seemed to grasp the danger. Chauvin responded: “Stay … put where you got him.”
WHICH TYPE OF RESTRAINT WAS CHAUVIN TRYING TO PERFORM?
That’s unclear. Donald Williams, a former mixed martial arts fighter who saw Chauvin restraining Floyd, testified last week that he believed Chauvin was attempting what he and other MMA fighters know as a blood choke — a permitted move in competitions in which carotid arteries are pressed for no more than 10 seconds to render an opponent unconscious.
“The officer on top was shimmying to actually get the final choke in,” Williams told jurors.
The police chief testified Monday he believed Chauvin was attempting a conscious neck retraint but held it far longer than department policy allowed.
HOW MUCH PRESSURE WAS CHAUVIN APPLYING?
That’s also in dispute.
One witness testified she saw Chauvin lift his right leg at one point, shifting his full weight onto Floyd’s neck with his left leg. Another said Chauvin never eased up, either by putting a hand on the ground or leaning on a squad car next to him.
Nelson said a medical examiner found no bruising of Floyd’s neck or any injury to neck structures. “Clearly, Mr. Chauvin was cautious about the amount of pressure he used to restrain Mr. Floyd,” one defense filing said.
Nelson has also made clear he will argue that Floyd died because of drugs he had taken, not because of Chauvin’s actions. An autopsy found fentanyl and methamphetamine in Floyd’s system.
EXPERTS ON THE NECK RESTRAINT
Jack Ryan, a Rhode Island lawyer and former police officer trained in chokeholds who was an expert for plaintiffs in the Smith family lawsuit, questioned in a phone interview whether it ever made sense for Minneapolis and other police departments to allow blood chokes. When officers try to execute one on a flailing suspect, it can go wrong quickly, with officers inadvertently blocking a suspect’s airway.
A consensus has grown over the years, accelerated by Floyd’s case, that it’s not practical to provide officers the constant training they need to master and maintain the art of the blood choke.
“It’s a move that requires precision in training, which means these are very perishable skills,” Scott Allen DeFoe, a former Los Angeles police officer trained in martial arts, testifying for plaintiffs in a 2019 lawsuit in California against police who used choke holds.
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Find AP’s full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd
EXPLAINER: Minneapolis chief has sought to reform department
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo was a star witness for the prosecution Monday at the trial of a former officer charged with killing George Floyd, repeating the criticism he levied after Floyd’s death.
Arradondo, the city’s first Black chief, fired Derek Chauvin and three other officers the day after Floyd died, and soon afterward labelled it “murder.” He testified Monday that Chauvin’s actions were counter to his training and to department values.
It’s a familiar message. Arradondo has spent the months since Floyd’s death trying to transform a police department derided by critics as brutal and resistant to change, while fighting to preserve it from a liberal City Council that wants to replace it with a public safety unit or cut the number of officers.
FROM PATROL OFFICER TO POLICE CHIEF
Arradondo, a fifth-generation Minnesotan, joined the Minneapolis Police Department as a patrol officer, eventually working his way up to precinct inspector and head of the Internal Affairs Unit, which investigates officer misconduct allegations. Along the way, he and four other Black officers successfully sued the department for discrimination in promotions, pay and discipline. His predecessor, Janee Harteau, promoted him to assistant chief in early 2017.
He took over months later, after Harteau was forced out over the fatal shooting of Australia native Justine Ruszczyk Damond, who had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault behind her house. The Black officer in that case was convicted of third-degree murder and is serving a 12 1/2-year term. Damond’s death came two years after 24-year-old Jamar Clark, who was Black, was killed in a scuffle with two white police officers, setting off weeks of protests; neither officer was charged.
BECOMING POLICE CHIEF
When Arradondo was tapped to lead the Minneapolis Police Department in 2017, he faced a public newly outraged by Damond’s death and still carrying deep mistrust over the killing of Clark.
Civil rights advocates say Arradondo inherited a department with a history of misconduct spanning decades.
Many hoped he could change the culture of a department that critics said too frequently used excessive force and discriminated against people of color. He spoke of restoring trust during a swearing-in ceremony that became a community celebration featuring song, dance and prayer.
Arradondo made some quick changes, including toughening department policy on use of body cameras and requiring all officers to go through training that stresses respectful interaction with the public. But he was criticized following Floyd’s death. Council member Steve Fletcher said Arradondo was lenient in his first year as chief as he worked to build department morale, which made it more difficult to get rid of problem officers later.
AFTER FLOYD’S DEATH
Arradondo quickly fired the four officers at the scene of Floyd’s death.
Derek Chauvin, the white officer seen on video pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes, 29 seconds, was charged with second-degree murder and other counts. City records show he had 17 complaints against him, only one of which resulted in discipline. He also shot two people during his 19-year career and was never charged.
The other three officers face charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder.
Arradondo and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey pushed for sweeping policy changes: Banning police chokeholds and neck restraints; requiring officers to try to stop any other officers they see using improper force; and preventing officers involved in using deadly force from reviewing body camera footage before completing an initial police report.
But they also faced efforts from the City Council to disband the police department altogether — a move that was eventually blocked from appearing on November ballots.
Minneapolis agreed to pay $27 million to Floyd’s family to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging the city allowed a culture of excessive force, racism and impunity to flourish in its police force.
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Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan. Groves reported from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
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Find AP’s full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd