George Floyd Case

Minneapolis Close to Ending Current Police Force

/ Alexander Massaad / Leave a comment

A majority of the members of the Minneapolis City Council said Sunday they support disbanding the city’s police department, an aggressive stance that comes just as the state has launched a civil rights investigation after George Floyd’s death.

Advertisements

Nine of the council’s 12 members appeared with activists at a rally in a city park Sunday afternoon and vowed to end policing as the city currently knows it. Council member Jeremiah Ellison promised that the council would “dismantle” the department.

“It is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,” Lisa Bender, the council president, said. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period.”

Bender went on to say she and the eight other council members that joined the rally are committed to ending the city’s relationship with the police force and “to end policing as we know it and recreate systems that actually keep us safe.”

Floyd, a handcuffed black man, died May 25 after a white officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, ignoring his “I can’t breathe” cries and holding it there even after Floyd stopped moving. His death sparked protests — some violent, many peaceful — that spread nationwide.

Community activists have criticized the Minneapolis department for years for what they say is a racist and brutal culture that resists change. The state of Minnesota launched a civil rights investigation of the department last week, and the first concrete changes came Friday in a stipulated agreement in which the city agreed to ban chokeholds and neck restraints.

Advertisements

A more complete remaking of the department is likely to unfold in coming months.

Disbanding an entire department has happened before. In 2012, with crime rampant in Camden, N.J., the city disbanded its police department and replaced it with a new force that covered Camden County. Compton, Calif., took the same step in 2000, shifting its policing to Los Angeles County.

It was a step that then-Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department was considering for Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown. The city eventually reached an agreement short of that but one that required massive reforms overseen by a court-appointed mediator.

If you enjoy what you are reading, consider making a small donation to The Washington Ledger. Your support helps keep the lights on. Any amount is appreciated.

Buy me a coffee
Support Me on Patreon
Send Me A Donation

Buffalo Police Shove 75-Year-Old Protester To Ground

/ Alexander Massaad / Leave a comment

The latest night of protests in New York City sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police was markedly calmer, while video of a police officer appearing to shove an elderly protester who falls and cracks his head in Buffalo drew widespread condemnation.

Video from WFBO showed a Buffalo police officer appearing to push the 75-year-old man who walked up to police clearing Niagara Square around the 8 p.m. curfew Thursday. The man falls straight backward and hits his head on the pavement, with blood leaking out as officers walk past.

The video quickly went viral on social media, spurring outrage. Buffalo police initially said in a statement that a person “was injured when he tripped & fell,” WIVB-TV reported, but Capt. Jeff Rinaldo later told the TV station that an internal affairs investigation was opened. The police commissioner subsequently suspended two police officers without pay, Mayor Byron Brown said in a statement.

The mayor of the western New York city, who expressed he was “deeply disturbed” by the video, said the unidentified man was in “stable but serious” condition at a hospital.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz tweeted Friday morning that a hospital official said the man was “alert and oriented.”

“Let’s hope he fully recovers,” Poloncarz added.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo endorsed the officers’ suspensions, tweeting that what was seen on video was “wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful.” The office of State Attorney General Letitia James tweeted that they were aware of the video. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer called for an investigation, according to a statement reported by WIVB-TV.

“The casual cruelty demonstrated by Buffalo police officers tonight is gut-wrenching and unacceptable,” John Curr, the Buffalo chapter director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement, adding that it should be a “wake-up call” for city leaders to address police violence.

Calls and emails to Buffalo police from The Associated Press seeking comment Thursday night hadn’t been returned by Friday morning.

Meanwhile in New York City, protesters again stayed on the streets past 8 p.m., in defiance of the citywide curfew that’s set to remain in effect through at least Sunday. Nationwide, the tenor of the protests set off by the death of Floyd, a black man who died Memorial Day after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, moved from explosive anger to a quiet yet forceful call for more to be done to address racial injustice.

The switch was largely mirrored in New York, which saw fewer violent clashes than in days past. But several videos posted to Twitter on Thursday night showed police aggressively confronting peaceful protesters — often resulting in arrest — in the Bronx and elsewhere. In other places, police watched but didn’t immediately move in, or made orderly arrests without the batons and riot gear of previous nights.

Miguel Fernandes said there were “a lot more nights to go” of marching.

“We’re still waiting for a conviction. We still haven’t gotten it,” Fernandes said. “All they’re doing is putting in charges. The system is not doing anything to make these guys pay for what they did.”

Earlier Thursday, a memorial service featuring Floyd’s brother Terrence Floyd was held at Brooklyn’s Cadman Plaza, where the night before police had used batons and pepper spray on protesters who remained after curfew, videos show.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Cuomo, both Democrats, said they hadn’t seen the widely shared videos, but Cuomo later tweeted that he was asking James to investigate as part of her ongoing look into police tactics during the protests.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea has defended his officers and the department’s overall use of force.

De Blasio was booed and heckled at Floyd’s memorial, where even some speakers took shots at the mayor, criticizing his management of the NYPD and response to the coronavirus pandemic. The mayor had previously praised the police for using “a lot of restraint” overall, but added that “if there’s anything that needs to reviewed, it will be.”

Shortly after midnight, the mayor tweeted that he had spoken to Shea after seeing a video of a delivery worker arrested. Food delivery is essential work, de Blasio said, adding in a second tweet that journalists covering protests, too, were essential workers.

De Blasio had previous condemned police for roughing up journalists, including two from the AP who were shoved, cursed at and told to go home by officers Tuesday night.

“Will get NYPD to fix this immediately,” he tweeted Thursday.

Both Cuomo and de Blasio have said protesters should abide by the curfew to deter the violence, vandalism and destruction that followed protests Sunday and Monday nights. But as darkness fell Thursday, cries of “George Floyd” and “No justice, no peace” continued to ring out from crowds, even as they shrank.

“It’s energetic,” Kenyata Taylor said. “It’s great to be alive, it’s history right now.”

Bureau of Prison Riot Teams Deployed to DC Protests

/ Alexander Massaad / Leave a comment

Among the alphabet soup of federal law enforcement agencies patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C. in recent days, a deployment of “crisis management” teams from the Federal Bureau of Prisons stuck out like a sore thumb.

That’s because the federal prison guards don’t typically deal with unincarcerated people, let alone protesters calling for an end to police brutality.

And yet, on Wednesday, photos from the demonstrations in D.C. showed men in riot gear on the city’s streets without identifying information on their uniforms. Eventually, the Bureau of Prisons confirmed to MSNBC that the men were “SORT” — Special Operations Response Teams.

The show of force was met with extreme skepticism.

“This is a very, very bad idea,” the former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich said Monday in response to the news that the department was deploying the federal prison riot teams to D.C. and Miami.

“Bureau of Prisons riot teams are trained to deal with disturbances created by convicted criminals in prison facilities, not with protesters on the streets of our cities,” Bromwich said. “These are worlds apart.”

Deborah Golden, an attorney who’s worked for years on federal prisoners’ rights, told TPM that federal prison guards work from a drastically different set of rules than street cops.

“Respecting the rights of people to assemble and petition the government is not something that BOP officers are trained to be as cautious about,” she said. “It would be a sign of incredible danger if you were in a prison and a group of 100 prisoners congregated and started chanting. Any BOP officer would be trained to react immediately to that as a serious situation.”

In prison, incarcerated people know about the obligation to follow officers’ orders, Golden said, such as an order to get down on the ground if something were to happen in an open yard.

“That’s not something that people in Lafayette Park have to obey, and aren’t going to,” she said.

In a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sounded the alarm over the “unidentified federal law enforcement personnel” at the nation’s capital, which included the BOP officers.

“We are concerned about the increased militarization and lack of clarity that may increase chaos,” she wrote.

At a press conference Thursday alongside Barr and others, Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal said federal prison guards were “often called upon to assist during crisis situations within our communities.”

“BOP Crisis Management teams are highly trained to deal with various types of emergency situations, including crowd control and civil disturbances,” he added. “They are experienced in confrontation avoidance and conflict resolution.”

Later Barr said SORT teams were “used frequently for emergency response and in emergency situations in either civil disturbances or hurricanes or other things like that.”

There were at least two uses of BOP personnel in emergency situations when Barr was last attorney general, in the early ‘90s.

Two days after Hurricane Andrew rammed into the state of Florida, “Bureau staff, assisted by the U.S. Marshals Service, had safely transported nearly 1,400 inmates to other Bureau and non-Bureau correctional facilities throughout the Southeast Region,” according to a “State of the Bureau” report for that year.

Also in 1992, Los Angeles experienced an upheaval over the police beating of Rodney King. In response, as the report describes, “20 of the Bureau’s Special Operations Response Teams (SORT’s) from Federal institutions nationwide traveled to the riot-torn area.”

The report describes a chaotic situation, with the special operator prison guards patrolling neighborhoods, searching burned-out buildings, “apprehending four individuals possessing cocaine, preventing an individual from stabbing a woman, and apprehending a sniper who had been shooting at residents.”

As Golden noted, it “doesn’t sound like they were doing protest patrol.”

If you enjoy what you are reading, consider making a small donation to The Washington Ledger. Your support helps keep the lights on. Any amount is appreciated.

Buy me a coffee
Support Me on Patreon
Send Me A Donation

MN Attorney General Charges All Four Cops Involved In George Floyd Killing

/ Alexander Massaad / Leave a comment

Prosecutors charged a Minneapolis police officer accused of pressing his knee against George Floyd’s neck with second-degree murder on Wednesday, and for the first time leveled charges against three other officers at the scene, according to criminal complaints.

Advertisements

The upgraded charge against Derek Chauvin says the officer’s actions were a “substantial causal factor” in Floyd’s death.

“Officer Chauvin’s restraint of Mr. Floyd in this manner for a prolonged period was a substantial causal factor in Mr. Floyd losing consciousness, constituting substantial bodily harm, and Mr. Floyd’s death as well,” the criminal complaint said.

Widely seen bystander video showing Floyd’s May 25 death has sparked protests nationwide and around the world against police brutality and discrimination. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was fired May 26 and initially charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The three other officers involved were also fired but were not immediately charged.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison upgraded the charge against Chauvin to unintentional second-degree murder. He also charged Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Ellison was expected to talk about the new charges on Wednesday afternoon.

Attorney Earl Gray, who represents Lane, told The Associated Press that the Star Tribune’s initial report about the charges was accurate, before ending the call. Before news of the upgraded charges, an attorney for Chauvin said he was not making any statements at this time. Attorneys for Thao and Kueng did not return messages seeking comment on the charges.

Attorney Ben Crump tweeted that the Floyd family was “deeply gratified” by Ellison’s action and called it “a source of peace for George’s family in this difficult time.” He said Ellison had told the family his office will continue to investigate and upgrade charges against Chauvin to first-degree murder if warranted. Reached by phone, Crump declined to speak beyond the statement or make clear when Ellison had spoken with the family and whether he had been informed directly that additional charges had been filed.

Advertisements

Floyd’s family and protesters have repeatedly called for criminal charges against all four officers as well as more serious charges for Chauvin, who held his knee to Floyd’s neck, despite his protests that he couldn’t breathe, and stayed there even after Floyd stopped moving. Floyd, a black man, was in handcuffs when he died with his face pressed to the street.

“He died because he was starving for air,” Crump said at a news conference earlier Wednesday. “He needed a breath. So we are demanding justice. We expect all of the police officers to be arrested before we have the memorial here in Minneapolis, Minnesota, tomorrow.”

Crump said the other officers failed to protect a man who was pleading for help and said he couldn’t breathe.

“We are expecting these officers to be charged as accomplices,” he said.

Personnel records released by the city show Chauvin served as a military policeman in the U.S. Army in the late 1990s. Since being hired as a police officer in 2001, he has been awarded two medals of valor: One for being part of a group of officers who opened fire on a stabbing suspect after the man pointed a shotgun at them in 2006, and one for apprehending another man in a domestic incident in 2008. In the latter incident, Chauvin broke down a bathroom door and shot the man in the stomach.

Chauvin was reprimanded in 2008 for pulling a woman out of her car in 2007, frisking her and placing her in his squad car after he stopped her for speeding 10 miles per hour over the limit. His dashboard camera was not activated and a report said he could have interviewed the woman while standing outside her car.

Lane, 37, and Kueng both joined the department in February 2019 and neither have any complaints on their files.

Lane previously worked as a correctional officer at the Hennepin County juvenile jail and as a probation officer at a residential treatment facility for adolescent boys.

Advertisements

Kueng was a 2018 graduate of the University of Minnesota where he worked part-time on campus security. He also worked as a theft-prevention officer at Macy’s in downtown Minneapolis while he was in college.

Tou Thao, a native Hmong speaker, joined the police force as a part-time community service officer in 2008 and was promoted to police officer in 2009. He was laid off later that year due to budget cuts and rehired in 2012.

Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights on Tuesday launched a civil rights investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department and its history of racial discrimination, in hopes of forcing widespread change.

Independent Coroner Autopsy Rules George Floyd Died of Asphyxiation

/ Alexander Massaad / Leave a comment

An autopsy commissioned for George Floyd’s family found that he died of asphyxiation due to neck and back compression when a Minneapolis police officer held his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes and ignored his cries of distress, the family’s attorneys said Monday.

Advertisements

The autopsy by a doctor who also examined Eric Garner’s body found the compression cut off blood to Floyd’s brain, and weight on his back made it hard to breathe, attorney Ben Crump said at a news conference.

The family’s autopsy differs from the official autopsy as described in a criminal complaint against the officer. That autopsy included the effects of being restrained, along with underlying health issues and potential intoxicants in Floyd’s system, but also said it found nothing “to support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.”

Floyd, a black man who was in handcuffs at the time, died after the white officer ignored bystander shouts to get off him and Floyd’s cries that he couldn’t breathe. His death, captured on citizen video, sparked days of protests in Minneapolis that have spread to cities around America.

The official autopsy last week provided no other details about intoxicants, and toxicology results can take weeks. In the 911 call that drew police, the caller described the man suspected of paying with counterfeit money as “awfully drunk and he’s not in control of himself.”

Crump said last week that he was commissioning the family’s own autopsy. Floyd’s family, like the families of other black men killed by police, wanted an independent look because they didn’t trust local authorities to produce an unbiased autopsy.

The family’s autopsy was conducted by Michael Baden and Allecia Wilson. Baden is the former chief medical examiner of New York City, who was hired to conduct an autopsy of Eric Garner, a black man who died in 2014 after New York police placed him in a chokehold and he pleaded that he could not breathe.

Baden also conducted an independent autopsy of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri. He said Brown’s autopsy, requested by the teen’s family, didn’t reveal signs of a struggle, casting doubt on a claim by police that a struggle between Brown and the officer led to the shooting.

The officer who held his knee on Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter and is in custody in a state prison. The other three officers on scene, like Chauvin, were fired the day after the incident but have not been charged.

Advertisements

Crump on Monday called for the remaining three officers to be arrested and for the charge against Chauvin to be upgraded to first-degree murder.

The head of the Minneapolis police union said in a letter to members that the officers were fired without due process and labor attorneys are fighting for their jobs. Lt. Bob Kroll, the union president, also criticized city leadership, saying a lack of support is to blame for the days of sometimes violent protests.

When asked to respond, Mayor Jacob Frey said: “For a man who complains so frequently about a lack of community trust and support for the police department, Bob Kroll remains shockingly indifferent to his role in undermining that trust and support.” Frey said Kroll’s opposition to reform and lack of empathy for the community has undermined trust in the police.

Gov. Tim Walz announced Sunday that Attorney General Keith Ellison would take the lead in any prosecutions in Floyd’s death. Local civil rights activists have said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman doesn’t have the trust of the black community. They have protested outside his house, and pressed him to charge the other three officers.

Freeman remains on the case.