Black Officer’s Pledge Unravels
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — There were two black men at the scene of the police killing in May that has roiled the United States. One, George Floyd, was sprawled on the asphalt, with a white officer’s knee on his neck. The other black man, Alex Kueng, was a rookie police officer who held his back as Mr. Floyd struggled to breathe.
Mr. Floyd, whose name has been painted on murals and scrawled on protest signs, has been laid to rest. Mr. Kueng, who faces charges in Mr. Floyd’s death, is out on bail, hounded at the supermarket by strangers and denounced by some family members.
Long before Mr. Kueng was arrested, he had wrestled with the issue of police abuse of black people, joining the force in part to help protect people close to him from police aggression. He argued that diversity could force change in a Minneapolis Police Department long accused of racism.
He had seen one sibling arrested and treated poorly, in his view, by sheriff’s deputies. He had found himself defending his decision to join the police force, saying he thought it was the best way to fix a broken system. He had clashed with friends over whether public demonstrations could actually make things better.
“He said, ‘Don’t you think that that needs to be done from the inside?’ ” his mother, Joni Kueng, recalled him saying after he watched protesters block a highway years ago. “That’s part of the reason why he wanted to become a police officer — and a black police officer on top of it — is to bridge that gap in the community, change the narrative between the officers and the black community.”
Derek Chauvin, the officer who placed his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, has been most widely associated with the case. He faces charges of second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter; Mr. Kueng and two other former officers were charged with aiding and abetting the killing. At 26, Mr. Kueng was the youngest and least experienced officer at the scene, on his third shift as a full officer.
The arrest of Mr. Kueng, whose mother is white and whose father was from Nigeria, has brought anguish to his friends and family. “It’s a gut punch,” Ms. Kueng said. “Here you are, you’ve raised this child, you know who he is inside and out. We’re such a racially diverse family. To be wrapped up in a racially motivated incident like this is just unfathomable.”
Two of Mr. Kueng’s siblings, Taylor and Radiance, both of whom are African-American, called for the arrests of all four officers, including their brother. Radiance posted a video of Mr. Floyd’s final minutes on Facebook. “Just broke my heart,” she wrote. In an interview, she said that as a black man, her brother should have intervened. “I don’t care if it was his third day at work or not,” she said. “He knows right from wrong.”
Mr. Kueng was raised by his mother. His father was absent. Ms. Kueng signed up with an African-American adoption agency. When Alex was 5, she brought home a baby boy who had been abandoned at a hospital. Alex soon asked for a sister; Radiance arrived when he was 11. Taylor and a younger brother came in 2009, when Alex was about 16.
Ms. Kueng taught math at the schools her children went to, where the student body was often mostly Hmong, African-American and Latino. Classmates described Alex Kueng as friends with everyone, a master of juggling a soccer ball and a defender against bullies.
Darrow Jones, who is black, said he first met Mr. Kueng on the playground when he was 6. When Mr. Jones’s mother died in 2008, Ms. Kueng took him in for as long as a month at a time.
Mr. Kueng thought he had the ability to bridge the gap between white and black worlds, Mr. Jones said. By February 2019, Mr. Kueng had made up his mind: He signed up as a police cadet.
His choice to become an officer caused a rift in the friendship. In December, Mr. Kueng graduated from the police academy.
For most of his field training, Mr. Chauvin, with 19 years on the job, was his training officer. Mr. Chauvin extended his training period, feeling he was meeting too often with a fellow trainee, Thomas Lane, when responding to calls, rather than handling them on his own, Ms. Kueng said. But on May 22, Mr. Kueng officially became one of about 80 black officers on a police force of almost 900.
On May 25, Mr. Kueng and Mr. Lane, now partnered up, were the first officers to answer a call of a counterfeit $20 bill being passed at a corner store. They found Mr. Floyd in a car outside.
After they failed to get Mr. Floyd into the back of a squad car, Mr. Chauvin and Tou Thao, another officer, showed up.
As Mr. Chauvin jammed his knee into the back of Mr. Floyd’s neck, Mr. Kueng held down Mr. Floyd’s back, according to prosecutors. Mr. Chauvin kept his knee there as Mr. Floyd repeated “I can’t breathe” and “mama” and “please.” Mr. Kueng did nothing to intervene, prosecutors say.
All four officers have been fired and face 40 years in prison. Mr. Kueng, who was released on bail on June 19, declined to be interviewed.
A day after Mr. Floyd’s death, Mr. Jones learned that Mr. Kueng was one of the officers who had been present. “I’m feeling a lot of sadness and a lot of disappointment,” Mr. Jones said. “A lot of us believe he should have stepped in and should have done something.”