By MSR Online
MINNEAPOLIS – The second week of the Derek Chauvin murder trial kicked off with the much-anticipated testimony of Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo who outright condemned former police officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd. He said Chauvin’s use of force was in violation of Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) policy.
“Once there was no longer any resistance,” said Chief Arradondo, “and clearly when Mr. Floyd was no longer responsive and even motionless, to continue to apply that level of force to a person proned out, handcuffed behind their back—that in no way shape or form is anything that is by policy. It is not part of our training, and it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values.”
Arradondo, who became the first Black police chief of Minneapolis in 2017, spent the first of his more than two-hour testimony fielding questions from prosecutor Steve Schleicher about his 32-year history with the MPD. It was established through his testimony that he’s served in every rank within the department.
It wasn’t until after a break for lunch that Schleicher asked Arradondo about the events of May 25, 2020, when Chauvin pinned Floyd under his knee while he was handcuffed and in the prone position. Arradondo recalled that when he initially watched the city surveillance video of the fatal arrest, he didn’t see anything that alarmed him. The video was shot showing the back of the officers and from a distance.
It wasn’t until around midnight that a community member reached out to him to ask if he’d seen Darnella Frazier’s infamous video of Chauvin’s knee restraint on Floyd—force that should’ve stopped “once Mr. Floyd had stopped resisting, and certainly, once he was distressed and trying to verbalize that,” said Arradondo in court.
Arradondo fired all the officers involved in Floyd’s arrest within 24 hours of the incident. At the time he said, “The officers knew what was happening—one intentionally caused it and the others failed to prevent it. This was murder—it wasn’t a lack of training.”
In addition to his use of force, on the witness stand, Arradondo faulted Chauvin for not rendering aid to Floyd and not using de-escalation tactics during the arrest. In essence, the chief said that Chauvin showed little regard for Floyd’s sanctity of life, a concept that he stressed throughout his testimony as a pillar of the department.
“[Chauvin’s knee restraint] is not de-escalation. And when you talk about the framework of the sanctity of life…that action goes contrary to what we’re taught,” he said.
For to read more, go to: https://spokesman-recorder.com/2021/04/05/mpd-chief-arradondo-chauvin-violated-policy/
Reposted with permission from Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.