Chauvin was the subject of at least 17 complaints during his career, according to police records, but only one led to discipline. Prosecutors sought permission to introduce eight prior use-of-force incidents, but the judge would only allow two. In the end the jury heard none.
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As Monroe Skinaway, 75, took in news of Chauvin's conviction, he flashed back to the night he witnessed Chauvin pin another man to the pavement with the same detached look as when he knelt on Floyd's neck.
It was March 2019, 15 months before Floyd's death would spark global protests against racism and police brutality.
But Skinaway still remembers what he deemed the indifference on Chauvin's face that night as he pressed Sir Rilee Peet's head into a puddle deep enough that he, like Floyd, struggled to breathe.
A jury on Tuesday found Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis police force, guilty of all three charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter, an outcome welcomed by activists as progress in holding law enforcement accountable for its treatment of Black Americans. Chauvin is white and Floyd was Black.
"We people of color very seldom get a good verdict," said Skinaway, who is Native American. "I'm kind of amazed."
'I CAN'T BREATHE, MAN'
Skinaway says he did not know Chauvin at the time he and another officer arrested Sir Rilee Peet, a young Native American man with a history of mental illness. But Skinaway later recognized him as the officer charged in Floyd's death.
Skinaway says he was speaking with the officers about the recovery of a stolen car when Peet approached and did not comply with requests to back away. A police report about the incident states that a struggle ensued and Chauvin maced Peet, applied a neck restraint and pinned him to the ground so he could be handcuffed.
The incident was one of the six prior use-of-force incidents that Judge Peter Cahill blocked prosecutors from presenting at trial, ruling they would be prejudicial.
In court filings, prosecutors said Chauvin restrained Peet in a manner that was beyond what was necessary or reasonable - an assertion also made by Skinaway in interviews with Reuters.
Skinaway says Chauvin grabbed Peet by the back of his hair and pressed his face into a rain puddle. That began a cycle where Peet would gasp for air and say "I can't breathe, man" before Chauvin would force his head down again.
Skinaway said he saw similarities between Chauvin's treatment of Peet and Floyd.
"He basically did the same thing to that Native kid," Skinaway said. "I think the incident would have gone longer possibly if the ambulance didn't show up."
'No sympathy' for Chauvin, say those who had run-ins before Floyd
For some of those who encountered Derek Chauvin's policing or witnessed his use of force as an officer there is no sympathy for the man convicted of killing George Floyd. Chauvin was the subject of at least 17 complaints during his career, according to police records, but only one led to...www.yahoo.com
I have to wonder, how the hell was this guy still on the street with a badge and a gun? 8 prior use of force incidents among at least 17 complaints? WTF does it take to get a bad cop fired? I can only surmise that it takes a death and some riots, otherwise it gets shoved under the rug. I'll be glad to read anyone else's ideas, but IMHO at least part of the reason why Chauvin was there in th 1st place was due to his police union and their donations to democrat political campaigns.
We know public unions including police unions make huge donations to political campaigns, almost all of which are democrats. And we know that in many of not most democrat-controlled cities and states, those unions have legislation that almost totally protects cops from prosecution. The judge in Chauvin's case would only allow 2 of the 8 prior use of force incidents, why is that? Would anyone else get that benefit? Consider:
In Minneapolis, one of the biggest hurdles to firing cops is a guarantee enshrined in state law and the city’s union contract: that officers can appeal their firing to independent arbitrators, who can reinstate them to their jobs with back pay. Cops in many states do the same. In Oakland, California, arbitrators in 2011 overturned the firing of Hector Jimenez, an officer who shot two unarmed men in the same year; he shot one of them in the back three times. Last year, an arbitrator reinstated a University of Minnesota cop who was accused of choking a woman who’d kicked his car while he was off duty; he denied the allegation, though her collarbone was bruised, and he admitted to getting into her personal space during an argument.
In fact, it’s exceedingly common for firings to be overturned. In a national study of 92 cases between 2011 and 2015, a University of Minnesota researcher found that arbitrators sided with the fired officer nearly half the time. From 2006 to 2017, about 70 percent of fired officers in San Antonio were reinstated after arbitration, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Sixty-two percent got their jobs back in Philadelphia, and 45 percent in Washington, DC. In St. Paul, Minnesota, another analysis showed that nearly half did. “It’s an emotional issue among police chiefs. To do the hard work of firing an officer and then have the arbitrator hand them back to you, it’s infuriating,” says Walker. Arradondo, the police chief, echoed this sentiment: “There is nothing more debilitating to a chief, from an employment matter perspective,” than when a fired officer is reinstated, he told reporters Wednesday.
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So why are so many arbitrators siding with cops? One major reason, including in Minneapolis, is that they’re often bound by precedent. If an officer shoots an unarmed man, an arbitrator might overturn his firing if another officer engaged in similar misconduct in the past but wasn’t fired. That’s problematic when you consider that police departments around the country have a long history of not punishing officers who use excessive force. In the case of George Floyd, it’s possible an arbitrator would look back to 2010, when another Minneapolis police officer restrained a man named David Cornelius Smith for four minutes by holding a knee to his back, even after he stopped breathing. Smith died of asphyxia, and the officer was never disciplined.
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But even if that problem were fixed, there are other issues. When an officer is accused of misconduct, the union’s contract requires the police department to provide the officer with documentation at least two days before asking the officer to make a formal statement, giving him or her ample time to come up with a story or justification for what happened. The contract also prohibits the department from recording misconduct in an officer’s personnel file if the officer was not disciplined. (And in Minneapolis, less than 1 percent of misconduct complaints filed by the public have led to discipline since 2012.) What’s more, the contract doesn’t cap the number of hours that officers can work as off-duty security guards for private companies that pay them directly, something activists fear could lead to exhaustion that impairs their judgment. In 2017, for example, after an officer named Mohamed Noor shot and killed a woman approaching his patrol car to report a rape, investigators learned he had gone on patrol that night after working seven hours off-duty at a Wells Fargo branch.
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One big obstacle for Minneapolis police abolitionists: the cops' union contract.
It could have implications for whether officers who kill get rehired.www.motherjones.com
Derek Chauvin was a bad cop, there's no way any decent cop keeps his knee on a guy's neck that long after he stops resisting. Be that as it may, IMHO there's no way this guy should have been there in the 1st place, wearing a badge and a gun. We can point the finger at him for his misdeeds and rightfully so. But when are we going to start asking questions about the decisions made that allowed him to do what he did?
What it boils down to is that the police unions and the democrats are in bed with each other, quid pro quo. Or are we to believe that the democrats in a position of authority to fire this guy failed to do so out of what? Incompetence? Or was it something else?
I thought he was a former police officer??
