After torching Minneapolis and burning down the police precinct last night for the May 25 death of 46-year-old African American George Floyd by 44-year-old police officer Derek Chauvin, the police finally arrested Chauvin charging him with third degree-murder and manslaughter. Minneapolis police deferred on the arrests of Chauvin’s three colleagues at the scene where Chauvin put his knee on handcuffed Floyd for eight minutes before his lifeless body was removed by paramedics and pronounced dead. Before his death, Floyd pleaded, “I can’t breathe,” with Chauvin’s full body weight knelling on Floyd’s neck. While bystanders screamed at Chauvin to get off his neck, he persisted uninterrupted until paramedics whisked away Floyd’s lifeless body. Videoed for all to see, the brutal scene went viral, prompting violence from Minneapolis’s African American community.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced the arrest and charge of third-degree murder and manslaughter, something charged because Floyd resisted arrest, ruling the murder essentially unintentional, even though Chauvin refused to stop kneeling on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes. Freeman hoped Chauvin’s arrest would quell the looting and widespread street violence that destroyed or torched 170 Minneapolis businesses. Freeman said other charges could be levied as the investigation goes forward. “The investigation is ongoing,” Freeman said. “We felt it was appropriate to focus on the most dangerous perpetrator. This case has moved at extraordinary speed,” while Minneapolis burned for the last three days. Minneapolis police got the message delivered by an angry mob when the police refused to arrest and levy charges at an egregious act of deadly police abuse.
Charging Chauvin with third-degree, one step removed from manslaughter, a kind of accidental or unintentional death, seems to mild for Chauvin’s use of a deadly chokehold, prohibited around the country as a law enforcement tactic. “By perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life,” read the Minnesota statute for third-degree murder. Clearly, this was not act “dangerous to others,” this was a deliberate use of an highly illegal chokehold, done in the presence of three other officers, watching, for all to see, someone die. Chauvin’s act was a deliberate public execution of an African American, not, as Freeman suggests, a murder without intent. While Chauvin may not have planned to kill Chauvin, his actions demonstrate far more than an act “eminently dangerous” behavior, deliberately snuffing out Floyd’s life.
Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension [BCA] and the FBI are jointly investigating Floyd’s murder for a possible hate crime. Chauvin’s behavior goes far beyond any statute for third-degree murder, to at the very least, second-degree murder. Second degree murder involves “intentional” acts without advance planning, something that fits Chauvin’s eight-minutes of sadistic hell, snuffing the life out of Floyd with a prohibited chokehold. Chauvin’s behavior goes so far beyond third-degree murder, the BCA and Hennepin County Attorney must revise the charges. It doesn’t matter how the BCA charged Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor who was convicted July 15, 2017 of third-degree murder for killing U.S. and Australian citizen Justince Ruszczyk Diamond. No one watching the video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes can say the death was unintentional.
When you consider that Floyd was arrested for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill, it shows how ordinary policing can go haywire, especially with unstable police officers, often undetected by their peers. Chauvin was a 19-year veteran with at least 12 complaints, one resulting in a letter of reprimand. Whatever his mental state at the time of the incident, it’s clear from the video he looked way too casual kneeling on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes. When the BCA and FBI review the tape, they’ll find Chauvin with little emotion while he choked Floyd to death, showing an intention to commit bodily harm. No one applies a chokehold for eight minutes thinking that any human could survive, giving prosecutors the intention needed for second-degree murder. By the time paramedics arrived at the scene, they couldn’t restart Floyd’s pulse, pronouncing him dead-on-arrival.
Whatever’s happened in the past with the Minneapolis police department, Hennepin County Atty. Mike Freeman must review the tape more completely to charge Chauvin appropriately. Choking Floyd to death for all to see does not fit Minnesota’s definition of third-degree murder. Chauvin’s actions were designed to cause extreme bodily harm, constituting malice aforethought, a distinguishing feature in second-degree murder. Kneeling on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes clearly meets the definition of “intention to kill or harm,” not Minnesota’s third-degree murder which only has an “eminently dangerous act to others.” “This is by far the fastest we’ve ever charged a police officer,” Freeman said. “Normally these cases can take nine months to a year.” Freeman had no choice by to arrest-and-charge Chauvin or watch Minneapolis racial violence spiral out of control.
