George Floyd Death Trial: Police Chief Says Former Constable Derek Chauvin Violated Institution Policy

The Minneapolis Police Chief, Medaria Arradondo, testified on Monday that to hold back the neck, as former agent Derek Chauvin did with the late African American George Floyd, is a violation of institutional policy.

Testifying in the Chauvin murder trial, Arradondo said this restriction is “not part of our policy, is not part of our training, and it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values”.

Arradondo, a 54-year-old black man who has headed the police in this town for three years, has been summoned by the prosecution to this extraordinary trial., after a first week of testimonies, most of them moving, which captivated the public in the United States.

In the United States, police officers who use excessive force are rarely fired by their superiors and, on the contrary, benefit from collective agreements, negotiated by their union, which are very protective.

In addition, they are very rarely prosecuted and less often found guilty.

Separately, the emergency room doctor who pronounced George Floyd dead after attempting to resuscitate him testified Monday that at the time he was treating the hypothesis that Floyd’s heart stopped beating due to lack of oxygen.

Dr Bradford Langenfeld, who was in the emergency room at Hennepin Medical Center that night, testified Derek Chauvin at the trial.

Langenfeld said Floyd’s heart stopped beating before he even reached the hospital. He added that he was not told of any attempt by passers-by or the police to resuscitate Floyd, but paramedics told him they tried for about 30 minutes.

When questioned by District Attorney Jerry Blackwell, Langenfeld said based on information he had at the time, “it was more likely than the other possibility” that Floyd’s cardiac paralysis was due to suffocation.

Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder in Floyd’s death on May 25 last year. The officer, who is white, is accused of pressing his knee on the neck of Floyd, who was African American, for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Floyd, who was 46, was handcuffed face down on the street outside a store where he allegedly attempted to pay for cigarettes with a fake $ 20 bill.

The defense contends that Chauvin acted as he was trained and that the cause of death was drug use and other health issues that Floyd previously had.

Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s lawyer, asked Langenfeld if certain drugs could cause hypoxia, which is a lack of oxygen.. The doctor recognized that fentanyl and methamphetamine, two substances in Floyd’s body, may have this effect.

The coroner’s office classified Floyd’s death as homicide, that is, caused by someone else.

The official report determined that Floyd died of “cardiopulmonary paralysis, combined with police subjugation and neck compression measures”. He adds that fentanyl poisoning and recent methamphetamine use were “other important conditions” but not “the cause of death.”

With information from AFP and AP

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