Cop Kneels On Black Man's Neck As He Screams, "I Can't Breathe!" Murderer and Inmate Derek Chauven Was Shanked
- Thread starter arnoldwsimmons
- Start date
He's trying to sue Kenneth Walker for HIS job-related injury? FOH!
New Music: De La Soul - Remove 45 (Anti-Trump) f. Styles P (WTF?), Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch, Mysonne & Chuck D
Styles P, Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch, Mysonne, and Public Enemy’s Chuck D, @woodchuck @easy_b @Camille @therealjondoe @largebillsonlyplease @ViCiouS @fonzerrillii @Dr. Truth @4 Dimensional
www.bgol.us
20/20 to investigate Breonna Taylor's death in new special — watch the powerful trailer
By Tyler Aquilina
November 13, 2020 at 01:00 PM EST
ew.com
Eight months after the killing of Breonna Taylor, ABC News is looking to shed new light on the intensely scrutinized case. ABC News has teamed with the Louisville Courier Journal for a special episode of 20/20 investigating the night of Taylor's death, with rare footage, previously unheard details, and new interviews guiding a deep dive into the case.
On March 13, Taylor, a 26-year-old Black ER technician, was shot and killed by Louisville, Ky., police officers while sleeping in her apartment. The case attracted nationwide attention in subsequent months and helped spur the summer's widespread protests over police brutality and racial inequality. In September, a grand jury declined to charge any of the officers for Taylor's death.
Some key details in the case have been disputed, particularly whether the officers announced themselves despite having a "no-knock" search warrant for Taylor's apartment. Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who was in the apartment with her, has said the officers did not identify themselves when knocking, leading him to fire a warning shot in self-defense. Police have maintained that they did identify themselves.
The two-hour 20/20 special features intense footage of the incident obtained from police body cameras, as well as home video of Taylor and new interviews with Walker, Louisville officer Jonathan Mattingly (who was shot during the incident), and Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, among others, all of which can be glimpsed in the powerful trailer above.
"It's not a race thing, like people want to try to make it to be," Mattingly insists in a clip from his interview. "We were doing our job, I get shot, we return fire."
"I always knew she would be great," an emotional Palmer says of Taylor. "I hate that she had to die to be great."
20/20's special investigation with The Courier Journal will premiere Friday, Nov. 20, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
By Tyler Aquilina
November 13, 2020 at 01:00 PM EST
'20/20' to investigate Breonna Taylor's death in new special — watch the powerful trailer
See the powerful trailer for a special episode of '20/20' investigating the killing of Breonna Taylor.
Eight months after the killing of Breonna Taylor, ABC News is looking to shed new light on the intensely scrutinized case. ABC News has teamed with the Louisville Courier Journal for a special episode of 20/20 investigating the night of Taylor's death, with rare footage, previously unheard details, and new interviews guiding a deep dive into the case.
On March 13, Taylor, a 26-year-old Black ER technician, was shot and killed by Louisville, Ky., police officers while sleeping in her apartment. The case attracted nationwide attention in subsequent months and helped spur the summer's widespread protests over police brutality and racial inequality. In September, a grand jury declined to charge any of the officers for Taylor's death.
Some key details in the case have been disputed, particularly whether the officers announced themselves despite having a "no-knock" search warrant for Taylor's apartment. Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who was in the apartment with her, has said the officers did not identify themselves when knocking, leading him to fire a warning shot in self-defense. Police have maintained that they did identify themselves.
The two-hour 20/20 special features intense footage of the incident obtained from police body cameras, as well as home video of Taylor and new interviews with Walker, Louisville officer Jonathan Mattingly (who was shot during the incident), and Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, among others, all of which can be glimpsed in the powerful trailer above.
"It's not a race thing, like people want to try to make it to be," Mattingly insists in a clip from his interview. "We were doing our job, I get shot, we return fire."
"I always knew she would be great," an emotional Palmer says of Taylor. "I hate that she had to die to be great."
20/20's special investigation with The Courier Journal will premiere Friday, Nov. 20, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
Meanwhile in Celebrity news TheGrio has reported a:
Judge rejects Derek Chauvin divorce filing due to possible fraud
Attorneys speculated that the Chauvins were looking to protect their collective assets and questioned if the the divorce was simply being done out of convenience. Freeman didn’t explicitely accuse the couple of fraud. “The Court has a duty to ensure that marriage dissolution agreements are fair and equitable. One badge of fraud is a party’s transfer of ‘substantially all’ of his or her assets,”
Judge rejects Derek Chauvin divorce filing due to possible fraud
Attorneys speculated that the Chauvins were looking to protect their collective assets and questioned if the the divorce was simply being done out of convenience. Freeman didn’t explicitely accuse the couple of fraud. “The Court has a duty to ensure that marriage dissolution agreements are fair and equitable. One badge of fraud is a party’s transfer of ‘substantially all’ of his or her assets,”
@gene cisco swears this was a gangbanger who was robbing people in the community he was in.
no blame to the cops who was firing as they arrived.
I normally wouldn't, but this is a sore point for me and a heavy accusation. Soooo....
Yo cocksucker, don't try to twist up any fucking thing I said you soft, wannabe ass bitch. You one of those slow, semi-functioning retards I see.
You and ya wife can eat a AIDS dick
I know exactly what u said and how u said it and when u said it
Don’t u dare try to play dumb Everytime I bring it up
The kid was 12 and YOU thought he was apart of that Cleveland gangbang band boys fuckery
he was 12 in a park by himself wit a pipe just doing some shit
did we see any videos or him robbing people?
Did we a call or report of somebody recently being robbed?
u made a blanket statement that u will always have to live by you piece of fucking shit
ima Remind you every anniversary till the day u die.
Tom Cisco
these pussy ass mercenaries we think are police officers...
are truly faggots, I promise you, pussy men like this faggot
are on their BEST behavior..
I respect a lawful community and its laws.. but if I see something like that, with that grown faggot on that lil
princess like that..
he getting kicked in the fuckin jaw.... fuck standing by like
a fuckin eunuch men gotta protect the children..
No shit Sherlock......
The statistics are informative, but like really how many more studies are needed?
‘Don’t Kill Me’: Others Tell of Abuse by Officer Who Knelt on George Floyd
New firsthand accounts accuse Derek Chauvin, the police officer who pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck in Minneapolis, of using similar tactics on detainees over the years.
Zoya Code says the Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd until he complained he could
not breathe treated her roughly as well.Credit...Nina Robinson for The New York Times
By Jamiles Lartey and Abbie VanSickle
Feb. 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
Nearly three years before the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd as he cried out that he couldn’t breathe last May, Zoya Code found herself in a similar position: handcuffed facedown on the ground, with Mr. Chauvin’s knee on her.
The officer had answered a call of a domestic dispute at her home, and Ms. Code said he forced her down when she tried to pull away.
“He just stayed on my neck,” Ms. Code said, ignoring her desperate pleas to get off. Frustrated and upset, she challenged him to press harder. “Then he did. Just to shut me up,” she said.
Last week, a judge in Minnesota ruled that prosecutors could present the details of her 2017 arrest in their case against the former officer, who was charged with second-degree unintentional murder in Mr. Floyd’s death.
Ms. Code’s case was one of six arrests as far back as 2015 that the Minnesota Attorney General’s office sought to introduce, arguing that they showed how Mr. Chauvin was using excessive force when he restrained people — by their necks or by kneeling on top of them — just as he did in arresting Mr. Floyd. Police records show that Mr. Chauvin was never formally reprimanded for any of these incidents, even though at least two of those arrested said they had filed formal complaints.
Of the six people arrested, two were Black, one was Latino and one was Native American. The race of two others was not included in the arrest reports that reporters examined.
Discussing the encounters publicly for the first time in interviews with The Marshall Project, three people who were arrested by Mr. Chauvin and a witness in a fourth incident described him as an unusually rough officer who was quick to use force and callous about their pain.
The interviews provide new insight into the history of a police officer whose handling of Mr. Floyd’s arrest, captured on video, was seen around the world and sparked months of protests in dozens of cities.
Mr. Chauvin, who was fired, has said through his attorney that his handling of Mr. Floyd’s arrest was a reasonable use of authorized force. But he was the subject of at least 22 complaints or internal investigations during his more than 19 years at the department, only one of which resulted in discipline. These new interviews show not only that he may have used excessive force in the past, but that he had used startlingly similar techniques.
All four people who told of their encounters with Mr. Chauvin had a history of run-ins with law enforcement, mostly for traffic and nonviolent offenses.
Ms. Code’s arrest occurred on June 25, 2017. In a court filing, Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, said the officer acted properly in the case, responding to “a violent crime in a volatile situation.” He said that “there was nothing unreasonable or unauthorized about Mr. Chauvin’s actions.”
Ms. Code’s mother had accused her of trying to choke her with an extension cord, according to the arrest report. Ms. Code said in an interview that her mother was swinging the cord around, and that she merely grabbed hold of it.
She said she had left the house to cool off after the fight and when she returned, Mr. Chauvin and his partner had arrived. In the prosecutors’ description, based on Mr. Chauvin’s report and body-camera video, Mr. Chauvin told Ms. Code she was under arrest and grabbed her arm. When she pulled away, he pulled her to the ground face first and knelt on her. The two officers then picked her up and carried her outside the house, facedown.
There, prosecutors said, Mr. Chauvin knelt on the back of the handcuffed woman “even though she was offering no physical resistance at all.”
Ms. Code, in an interview, said she began pleading: “Don’t kill me.”
At that point, according to the prosecutors’ account, Mr. Chauvin told his partner to restrain Ms. Code’s ankles as well, though she “was not being physically aggressive.”
As he tied her, she said, she told the other officer, “You’re learning from an animal. That man — that’s evilness right there.”
California Today: The news and stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state).
‘You’re choking me,’ a club patron protested
Misdemeanor domestic assault and disorderly conduct charges filed against Ms. Code were ultimately dropped.
The earliest incident in which prosecutors said Mr. Chauvin used excessive force took place on Feb. 15, 2015, when he arrested Julian Hernandez — a carpenter who was on a road trip to Minneapolis to see a band at the El Nuevo Rodeo nightclub. Mr. Chauvin worked as an off-duty security officer there for almost 17 years.
The arrest report filed by Mr. Chauvin said Mr. Hernandez tried to leave the club through the wrong door, and Mr. Chauvin stopped him and escorted him down a stairwell. Mr. Hernandez said in an interview that he had been drinking, but felt like Mr. Chauvin was pushing him down the stairs.
Prosecutors said Derek Chauvin used excessive force against Julian Hernandez in 2015.
Credit...Da'Shaunae Marisa for The New York Times
Outside, Mr. Hernandez said, “things escalated.”
Mr. Chauvin’s report said that Mr. Hernandez tried to turn around as he was preparing to handcuff him, so he pushed him away “by applying pressure toward his Lingual Artery” at the top of the neck.
Mr. Hernandez said the officer told him “you just need to leave,” and he remembered thinking to himself: “I’m trying to leave and you won’t let me.” As Mr. Chauvin pushed him into a wall and grabbed him by the throat, Mr. Hernandez recalled thinking, “You’re choking me.”
Mr. Hernandez said he tried to sue the department, but no lawyer would take his case. He was charged with disorderly conduct, but under a court agreement he avoided punishment by staying out of trouble for a year, records show.
Mr. Nelson, the officer’s lawyer, said in a court filing that there was no evidence that Mr. Chauvin acted improperly in “dealing with a resistant, aggressive arrestee by himself.”
Under the judge’s order, only Ms. Code’s arrest, among the six cases showing what may have been excessive force, can be used at Mr. Chauvin’s trial. Prosecutors also sought to include two additional cases they said showed just the opposite — that Mr. Chauvin knew how to use reasonable force to properly restrain a person.
The judge’s order will allow them to use one of those cases: an incident in which the police department commended Mr. Chauvin and other officers for taking lifesaving steps in placing a restrained, suicidal man on his side so he could breathe. Mr. Chauvin even rode with the man to the hospital, according to prosecutors.
According to the attorney general’s office, the arrest showed that he knew how important it was to avoid breathing problems in detainees. When he did not put Mr. Floyd in a similar side position, prosecutors contend, he understood that it could jeopardize his life.
Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer objected to any of the previous arrests being admitted at his trial, which is set to begin in March. He argued that Mr. Chauvin’s actions “were not crimes,” but rather part of Mr. Chauvin’s job as an officer, and that a police supervisor at each arrest scene reviewed his use of force and concluded that it comported with department standards.
The Minneapolis Police Department did not respond to queries about past complaints against Mr. Chauvin. Critics say the department has a long history of accusations of abuse, but never fully put in place federal recommendations to implement a better system of tracking complaints and punishing officers. Only a handful over the years have faced firing or serious punishment.
‘I can’t breathe,’ the man said
In another case prosecutors highlighted to try to establish a pattern of excessive force, a man said he landed in the hospital overnight after an encounter with Mr. Chauvin. The man, Jimmy Bostic, had made a purchase at the Midtown Global Market in April 2016 and was waiting for a ride when private security guards asked him to leave. A different shop owner had accused him of panhandling, the arrest report said. Mr. Bostic argued, and Mr. Chauvin was called in
.
Mr. Chauvin escorted Mr. Bostic outside, writing in the arrest report that Mr. Bostic had threatened to spit on the owner.
“I closed distance with” Mr. Bostic, Mr. Chauvin wrote, “and secured his neck/head area with my hands.”
Mr. Bostic said in an interview that as Mr. Chauvin and the private security guards attempted to put him in cuffs, he yanked his arm back.
“The next thing I felt was arms just wrapped around my neck,” he said. “I started telling him, ‘Let go, I’m having trouble breathing. I have asthma. I can’t breathe.’”
Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, in a court filing, said the officer “acted reasonably” and followed police policy in restraining Mr. Bostic, who he said was refusing orders and making threats.
After he was released from police custody at the scene, Mr. Bostic said, emergency medical workers took him to a hospital. Suffering from an asthma attack, he said, he stayed for over a day. A disorderly conduct charge against him was ultimately dropped.
“Looking back on Mr. Floyd, that could have been me,” said Mr. Bostic, who is now in state prison on an unrelated burglary conviction. “And I would no longer be alive right now to even tell my story.”
Monroe Skinaway, a 74-year-old Minneapolis resident, was a chance witness to another incident prosecutors cited that occurred in March 2019. He said in an interview that he had called the police after he spotted his grandson’s stolen car parked at a South Minneapolis gas station.
As he answered police questions about the car, Mr. Skinaway said, he saw a young man wandering nearby, asking officers to give him a ride. Mr. Skinaway said the man seemed “off.”
The man, named in the arrest report as Sir Rilee Peet, 26, followed one officer to his squad car. After Mr. Peet refused to take his hands out of his pockets, the officer tried to grab him, and they scuffled, the police report said.
That is when the other officer, identified in the report as Mr. Chauvin, sprayed Mr. Peet with Mace. Mr. Chauvin restrained him by the neck and pinned him facedown on the ground by kneeling on his lower back, according to the prosecutors’ description of body-camera video.
Mr. Skinaway said he remembers seeing the officer on top of Mr. Peet, but also something not mentioned in Mr. Chauvin’s account in the arrest report. Mr. Skinaway said the officer put Mr. Peet’s head, facedown, in a rain puddle. Other officers were present as well, he said.
“He said, ‘I can’t breathe — can I just put my head up?’” Mr. Skinaway said. “And they just held his face in the water, and I couldn’t see a purpose for that.”
Mr. Skinaway said he was about seven feet away as he watched Mr. Peet struggle for air, bubbles surfacing as he tried to breathe. He estimated that the officer kept Mr. Peet in the puddle for two to three minutes. Whenever Mr. Peet managed to turn his head for air, Mr. Skinaway said, the officer grabbed him by his long hair and put his head back in the water.
When he spoke by phone with a reporter, Mr. Skinaway said he did not know the officer’s name or that there was a connection with the Floyd case, but the details he described match those noted in the police report and prosecutors’ account.
Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, Mr. Nelson, said in a court filing that the officer had acted according to police policy. “It was after midnight in South Minneapolis, and a man who refused to remove his hands from his pockets repeatedly approached the officers after being told not to,” he said. The filing said Mr. Peet’s actions had created concern for the officers’ safety.
Mr. Peet was charged with misdemeanor obstruction of the legal process and disorderly conduct, but it is unclear from court records what happened to the charges. The records show Mr. Peet has a history of court-ordered treatment for mental illness. In a phone call, Mr. Peet told a reporter that he did not recall the encounter.
Some of those whom Mr. Chauvin arrested said that learning the same officer had been involved in Mr. Floyd’s death made them regret they had not pushed harder to hold the officer and the department accountable.
“I don’t have nothing against cops, I got relatives that are cops,” said Mr. Hernandez, the carpenter arrested at the nightclub. “But he should have never been on the force that long.”
New firsthand accounts accuse Derek Chauvin, the police officer who pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck in Minneapolis, of using similar tactics on detainees over the years.
Zoya Code says the Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd until he complained he could
not breathe treated her roughly as well.Credit...Nina Robinson for The New York Times
By Jamiles Lartey and Abbie VanSickle
Feb. 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
Nearly three years before the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd as he cried out that he couldn’t breathe last May, Zoya Code found herself in a similar position: handcuffed facedown on the ground, with Mr. Chauvin’s knee on her.
The officer had answered a call of a domestic dispute at her home, and Ms. Code said he forced her down when she tried to pull away.
“He just stayed on my neck,” Ms. Code said, ignoring her desperate pleas to get off. Frustrated and upset, she challenged him to press harder. “Then he did. Just to shut me up,” she said.
Last week, a judge in Minnesota ruled that prosecutors could present the details of her 2017 arrest in their case against the former officer, who was charged with second-degree unintentional murder in Mr. Floyd’s death.
Ms. Code’s case was one of six arrests as far back as 2015 that the Minnesota Attorney General’s office sought to introduce, arguing that they showed how Mr. Chauvin was using excessive force when he restrained people — by their necks or by kneeling on top of them — just as he did in arresting Mr. Floyd. Police records show that Mr. Chauvin was never formally reprimanded for any of these incidents, even though at least two of those arrested said they had filed formal complaints.
Of the six people arrested, two were Black, one was Latino and one was Native American. The race of two others was not included in the arrest reports that reporters examined.
Discussing the encounters publicly for the first time in interviews with The Marshall Project, three people who were arrested by Mr. Chauvin and a witness in a fourth incident described him as an unusually rough officer who was quick to use force and callous about their pain.
The interviews provide new insight into the history of a police officer whose handling of Mr. Floyd’s arrest, captured on video, was seen around the world and sparked months of protests in dozens of cities.
Mr. Chauvin, who was fired, has said through his attorney that his handling of Mr. Floyd’s arrest was a reasonable use of authorized force. But he was the subject of at least 22 complaints or internal investigations during his more than 19 years at the department, only one of which resulted in discipline. These new interviews show not only that he may have used excessive force in the past, but that he had used startlingly similar techniques.
All four people who told of their encounters with Mr. Chauvin had a history of run-ins with law enforcement, mostly for traffic and nonviolent offenses.
Ms. Code’s arrest occurred on June 25, 2017. In a court filing, Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, said the officer acted properly in the case, responding to “a violent crime in a volatile situation.” He said that “there was nothing unreasonable or unauthorized about Mr. Chauvin’s actions.”
Ms. Code’s mother had accused her of trying to choke her with an extension cord, according to the arrest report. Ms. Code said in an interview that her mother was swinging the cord around, and that she merely grabbed hold of it.
She said she had left the house to cool off after the fight and when she returned, Mr. Chauvin and his partner had arrived. In the prosecutors’ description, based on Mr. Chauvin’s report and body-camera video, Mr. Chauvin told Ms. Code she was under arrest and grabbed her arm. When she pulled away, he pulled her to the ground face first and knelt on her. The two officers then picked her up and carried her outside the house, facedown.
There, prosecutors said, Mr. Chauvin knelt on the back of the handcuffed woman “even though she was offering no physical resistance at all.”
Ms. Code, in an interview, said she began pleading: “Don’t kill me.”
At that point, according to the prosecutors’ account, Mr. Chauvin told his partner to restrain Ms. Code’s ankles as well, though she “was not being physically aggressive.”
As he tied her, she said, she told the other officer, “You’re learning from an animal. That man — that’s evilness right there.”
California Today: The news and stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state).
‘You’re choking me,’ a club patron protested
Misdemeanor domestic assault and disorderly conduct charges filed against Ms. Code were ultimately dropped.
The earliest incident in which prosecutors said Mr. Chauvin used excessive force took place on Feb. 15, 2015, when he arrested Julian Hernandez — a carpenter who was on a road trip to Minneapolis to see a band at the El Nuevo Rodeo nightclub. Mr. Chauvin worked as an off-duty security officer there for almost 17 years.
The arrest report filed by Mr. Chauvin said Mr. Hernandez tried to leave the club through the wrong door, and Mr. Chauvin stopped him and escorted him down a stairwell. Mr. Hernandez said in an interview that he had been drinking, but felt like Mr. Chauvin was pushing him down the stairs.
Prosecutors said Derek Chauvin used excessive force against Julian Hernandez in 2015.
Credit...Da'Shaunae Marisa for The New York Times
Outside, Mr. Hernandez said, “things escalated.”
Mr. Chauvin’s report said that Mr. Hernandez tried to turn around as he was preparing to handcuff him, so he pushed him away “by applying pressure toward his Lingual Artery” at the top of the neck.
Mr. Hernandez said the officer told him “you just need to leave,” and he remembered thinking to himself: “I’m trying to leave and you won’t let me.” As Mr. Chauvin pushed him into a wall and grabbed him by the throat, Mr. Hernandez recalled thinking, “You’re choking me.”
Mr. Hernandez said he tried to sue the department, but no lawyer would take his case. He was charged with disorderly conduct, but under a court agreement he avoided punishment by staying out of trouble for a year, records show.
Mr. Nelson, the officer’s lawyer, said in a court filing that there was no evidence that Mr. Chauvin acted improperly in “dealing with a resistant, aggressive arrestee by himself.”
Under the judge’s order, only Ms. Code’s arrest, among the six cases showing what may have been excessive force, can be used at Mr. Chauvin’s trial. Prosecutors also sought to include two additional cases they said showed just the opposite — that Mr. Chauvin knew how to use reasonable force to properly restrain a person.
The judge’s order will allow them to use one of those cases: an incident in which the police department commended Mr. Chauvin and other officers for taking lifesaving steps in placing a restrained, suicidal man on his side so he could breathe. Mr. Chauvin even rode with the man to the hospital, according to prosecutors.
According to the attorney general’s office, the arrest showed that he knew how important it was to avoid breathing problems in detainees. When he did not put Mr. Floyd in a similar side position, prosecutors contend, he understood that it could jeopardize his life.
Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer objected to any of the previous arrests being admitted at his trial, which is set to begin in March. He argued that Mr. Chauvin’s actions “were not crimes,” but rather part of Mr. Chauvin’s job as an officer, and that a police supervisor at each arrest scene reviewed his use of force and concluded that it comported with department standards.
The Minneapolis Police Department did not respond to queries about past complaints against Mr. Chauvin. Critics say the department has a long history of accusations of abuse, but never fully put in place federal recommendations to implement a better system of tracking complaints and punishing officers. Only a handful over the years have faced firing or serious punishment.
‘I can’t breathe,’ the man said
In another case prosecutors highlighted to try to establish a pattern of excessive force, a man said he landed in the hospital overnight after an encounter with Mr. Chauvin. The man, Jimmy Bostic, had made a purchase at the Midtown Global Market in April 2016 and was waiting for a ride when private security guards asked him to leave. A different shop owner had accused him of panhandling, the arrest report said. Mr. Bostic argued, and Mr. Chauvin was called in
.
Mr. Chauvin escorted Mr. Bostic outside, writing in the arrest report that Mr. Bostic had threatened to spit on the owner.
“I closed distance with” Mr. Bostic, Mr. Chauvin wrote, “and secured his neck/head area with my hands.”
Mr. Bostic said in an interview that as Mr. Chauvin and the private security guards attempted to put him in cuffs, he yanked his arm back.
“The next thing I felt was arms just wrapped around my neck,” he said. “I started telling him, ‘Let go, I’m having trouble breathing. I have asthma. I can’t breathe.’”
Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, in a court filing, said the officer “acted reasonably” and followed police policy in restraining Mr. Bostic, who he said was refusing orders and making threats.
After he was released from police custody at the scene, Mr. Bostic said, emergency medical workers took him to a hospital. Suffering from an asthma attack, he said, he stayed for over a day. A disorderly conduct charge against him was ultimately dropped.
“Looking back on Mr. Floyd, that could have been me,” said Mr. Bostic, who is now in state prison on an unrelated burglary conviction. “And I would no longer be alive right now to even tell my story.”
Monroe Skinaway, a 74-year-old Minneapolis resident, was a chance witness to another incident prosecutors cited that occurred in March 2019. He said in an interview that he had called the police after he spotted his grandson’s stolen car parked at a South Minneapolis gas station.
As he answered police questions about the car, Mr. Skinaway said, he saw a young man wandering nearby, asking officers to give him a ride. Mr. Skinaway said the man seemed “off.”
The man, named in the arrest report as Sir Rilee Peet, 26, followed one officer to his squad car. After Mr. Peet refused to take his hands out of his pockets, the officer tried to grab him, and they scuffled, the police report said.
That is when the other officer, identified in the report as Mr. Chauvin, sprayed Mr. Peet with Mace. Mr. Chauvin restrained him by the neck and pinned him facedown on the ground by kneeling on his lower back, according to the prosecutors’ description of body-camera video.
Mr. Skinaway said he remembers seeing the officer on top of Mr. Peet, but also something not mentioned in Mr. Chauvin’s account in the arrest report. Mr. Skinaway said the officer put Mr. Peet’s head, facedown, in a rain puddle. Other officers were present as well, he said.
“He said, ‘I can’t breathe — can I just put my head up?’” Mr. Skinaway said. “And they just held his face in the water, and I couldn’t see a purpose for that.”
Mr. Skinaway said he was about seven feet away as he watched Mr. Peet struggle for air, bubbles surfacing as he tried to breathe. He estimated that the officer kept Mr. Peet in the puddle for two to three minutes. Whenever Mr. Peet managed to turn his head for air, Mr. Skinaway said, the officer grabbed him by his long hair and put his head back in the water.
When he spoke by phone with a reporter, Mr. Skinaway said he did not know the officer’s name or that there was a connection with the Floyd case, but the details he described match those noted in the police report and prosecutors’ account.
Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, Mr. Nelson, said in a court filing that the officer had acted according to police policy. “It was after midnight in South Minneapolis, and a man who refused to remove his hands from his pockets repeatedly approached the officers after being told not to,” he said. The filing said Mr. Peet’s actions had created concern for the officers’ safety.
Mr. Peet was charged with misdemeanor obstruction of the legal process and disorderly conduct, but it is unclear from court records what happened to the charges. The records show Mr. Peet has a history of court-ordered treatment for mental illness. In a phone call, Mr. Peet told a reporter that he did not recall the encounter.
Some of those whom Mr. Chauvin arrested said that learning the same officer had been involved in Mr. Floyd’s death made them regret they had not pushed harder to hold the officer and the department accountable.
“I don’t have nothing against cops, I got relatives that are cops,” said Mr. Hernandez, the carpenter arrested at the nightclub. “But he should have never been on the force that long.”
Minority officers were barred from guarding Derek Chauvin in jail, lawsuit alleges
The lawsuit, filed in state district court, also claims Chauvin received special treatment from a white lieutenant.
Minority officers were barred from guarding Derek Chauvin in jail, lawsuit alleges
The lawsuit, filed in state district court, also claims Chauvin received special treatment from a white lieutenant.www.yahoo.com
Complexion for protection.....
Prosecutor: Buffalo police off The Hook For Knocking Down Elderly Man
The Buffalo police officers who violently shoved an elderly man to the ground during the George Floyd protests are off the hook ... they won't be indicted for felony assault.
Erie County D.A. John J. Flynn announced Thursday a Grand Jury decided not to hand up an indictment in the case against Buffalo PD officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe.
As we reported ... Martin Gugino was hospitalized after the push and shove caught on video last June, and his lawyer claimed he suffered a fractured skull and couldn't walk.
Torgalski and McCabe, meanwhile, were suspended, arrested ... and the D.A. charged them with 2nd-degree felony assault. However, the Grand Jury's "no bill" decision means the charges are now dismissed.
You'll recall ... former President Trump suggested -- without a shred of evidence -- Martin had ties to Antifa and went to the protest to cause dissent and chaos. Martin denied being part of Antifa at the time, and now the D.A. says any notion the elderly man is part of the group is "utter nonsense."
Flynn says the officers shouldn't have pushed Martin and instead made a peaceful arrest ... but a Grand Jury apparently didn't see enough evidence to indict them.
www.tmz.com
The Buffalo police officers who violently shoved an elderly man to the ground during the George Floyd protests are off the hook ... they won't be indicted for felony assault.
Erie County D.A. John J. Flynn announced Thursday a Grand Jury decided not to hand up an indictment in the case against Buffalo PD officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe.
As we reported ... Martin Gugino was hospitalized after the push and shove caught on video last June, and his lawyer claimed he suffered a fractured skull and couldn't walk.
Torgalski and McCabe, meanwhile, were suspended, arrested ... and the D.A. charged them with 2nd-degree felony assault. However, the Grand Jury's "no bill" decision means the charges are now dismissed.
You'll recall ... former President Trump suggested -- without a shred of evidence -- Martin had ties to Antifa and went to the protest to cause dissent and chaos. Martin denied being part of Antifa at the time, and now the D.A. says any notion the elderly man is part of the group is "utter nonsense."
Flynn says the officers shouldn't have pushed Martin and instead made a peaceful arrest ... but a Grand Jury apparently didn't see enough evidence to indict them.
Buffalo Cops' Felony Assault Case Dismissed, Knocked Down Elderly Man
The Buffalo cops who knocked down an elderly protester are off the hook for felony assault.
www.tmz.com
With New Grand Jury, Justice Department Revives Investigation Into Death of George Floyd (Published 2021)
As the state murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former officer charged in the death of George Floyd, approaches, the federal government has accelerated its own investigation.
Minneapolis 'autonomous zone': militant-style group claims Floyd memorial area
Investigations hindered by threats and tampering by crowds not allowing officers in
Police not welcome in George Floyd memorial site: Sgt. Brantner Smith
National Police Association Spokeswoman Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith reacts to a militant-style group occupying George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, declaring it a six-block autonomous zone that bars entry of police.
Investigations hindered by threats and tampering by crowds not allowing officers in
Police not welcome in George Floyd memorial site: Sgt. Brantner Smith
National Police Association Spokeswoman Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith reacts to a militant-style group occupying George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, declaring it a six-block autonomous zone that bars entry of police.
I need to hear some reports from those INSIDE GF Square. Fuck Faux and their Spin Zone. Those muhfuckas might be calling a Block Watch some militant group.
Called it...
A&E cancels Live PD, one of cable’s highest-rated shows, in wake of the George Floyd protests
A&E and Live PD producer MGM’s Big Fish Entertainment jointly agreed today to pull the plug on the cop reality show less than a week after yanking last weekend’s episodes amid police brutality protests over George Floyd’s killing, reports Deadline.www.primetimer.com
and looks like they had some troubles of their own
Dan Abrams wishes Live PD didn’t destroy its footage of Javier Ambler’s death while in police custody
The Live PD host wrote on his Law and Crime website that the show would never have aired Ambler’s death because "A&E standards and practices didn’t permit us to show a fatality on the show.
Ex-Texas sheriff charged again in probe of Black man’s death
A former Texas sheriff has been charged for the second time with evidence tampering in an investigation into the death in custody of a Black man that was filmed by the police reality TV series “Live PD,” officials announced Thursday. Robert Chody was booked into a Travis County jail on Thursday...
Ex-Texas sheriff charged again in probe of Black man’s death
A former Texas sheriff has been charged for the second time with evidence tampering in an investigation into the death in custody of a Black man that was filmed by the police reality TV series “Live PD,” officials announced Thursday. Robert Chody was booked into a Travis County jail on Thursday...news.yahoo.com
Texas county OKs $5M settlement over Black motorist's death
A Texas county has approved a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement with the family of a man who sheriff’s deputies shocked with stun guns after a 2019 chase
Texas county OKs $5M settlement over Black motorist's death
A Texas county has approved a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement with the family of a man who sheriff’s deputies shocked with stun guns after a 2019 chaseabcnews.go.com
Damn. So a life is only 5 mill now huh...
for police killings that is on the high end
true...
3 former police officers convicted of rights violations in George Floyd killing
Three former Minneapolis police officers have been convicted of violating George Floyd’s civil rights.
www.latimes.com
Three former Minneapolis police officers were convicted Thursday of violating George Floyd’s civil rights.
Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane were charged with depriving Floyd of his right to medical care when Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes as the 46-year-old Black man was handcuffed and facedown on the street on May 25, 2020.
Thao and Lane were also charged with failing to intervene to stop Chauvin.
Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back, Lane held his legs and Thao kept bystanders at bay.
Kueng and Lane both said they deferred to Chauvin as the senior officer at the scene. Thao testified that he relied on the other officers to care for Floyd’s medical needs as his attention was elsewhere.
Conviction of a federal civil rights violation that results in death is punishable by life in prison or even death, but such sentences are extremely rare. The former officers will remain free on bond pending sentencing.
Prosecutors told jurors during closing arguments that the three officers “chose to do nothing” as Chauvin squeezed the life out of Floyd. Defense attorneys countered that the officers were too inexperienced, weren’t trained properly and did not willfully violate Floyd’s rights.
All 12 members of the jury — eight women and four men — appeared to be white, although the court has not released demographics such as race or age. A woman who appeared to be of Asian descent was excused Tuesday from the panel without explanation; a man who appeared to be of Asian descent remains as an alternate if one of the current 12 cannot continue.
Lane is white, Kueng is Black and Thao is Hmong American.
That was a sharp contrast to the jury that deliberated the state murder case against Chauvin. That jurors were half white and half nonwhite.
The federal jury pool was selected from people throughout the state, which includes areas much more conservative and less diverse than the Minneapolis area from which Chauvin’s jury was drawn. Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter, and later pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge.
Chauvin and Thao went to the scene to help rookies Kueng and Lane after they responded to a call that Floyd used a counterfeit $20 bill at a corner store. Floyd struggled with officers as they tried to put him in a police SUV.
Thao watched bystanders and traffic as Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back and Lane held his legs.
Lane, Kueng and Thao also face a separate trial in June on state charges alleging they aided and abetted murder and manslaughter.
