Guards allege racial bias in Chauvin case
Eight minority correctional officers at a Minnesota county jail say they were segregated from the area where Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer charged in George Floyd’s death, was being held, and only white officers were allowed to guard or communicate with him, according to discrimination charges with the state.
One corrections officer, who described herself as a mixed-race woman, also suggested that Chauvin, who was filmed with his knee on Floyd’s neck, had been given special treatment at the Ramsey County Adult Detention Centre in St Paul. In a statement, she recalled watching security footage of a white female lieutenant, who was granted ‘‘special access’’ to Chauvin’s cell on May 30, sit on Chauvin’s bed and allow him to use her cellphone – amajor policy violation.
In the complaints, filed on Saturday with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, the eight officers, whose names are redacted because of fears of retaliation, say they were on regular duty
May 29 at the Ramsey County Adult Detention Centre when Chauvin was taken into custody on murder charges. Chauvin is white, and Floyd was black.
As the jail prepared for Chauvin’s arrival, a supervisor pulled all officers of colour from their regular duties, according to the complaints, and asked them to report to the third floor of the facility, away from the fifth floor, where Chauvin would be transported and held in a secluded cell. All were replaced by white officers, the complaints say.
One of the complainants, an acting sergeant who is black and who had processed highprofile inmates while working for more than a decade at the jail, said in a written statement that he was in the middle of patting Chauvin down when he was interrupted and told to stop by Steve Lydon, the jail’s superintendent.
‘‘The superintendent told me he did not want me participating,’’ the officer said, adding that white officers stepped in to replace him. He and other minority officers were also blocked from transporting Chauvin to his cell, the complaint said.
By then, word had spread that all of the facility’s minority staff was being ‘‘segregated’’ on the third floor of the jail, prompting anger. One complainant described being ‘‘shocked’’ at seeing security camera footage of only minority officers on the third floor, rather than being positioned throughout the facility as they usually are. Another officer said he had been told that Lydon didn’t want any minorities around Chauvin, viewing them as a possible liability.
Complaints led to an investigation by Ramsey County law enforcement officials in which Lydon insisted that he wasn’t racist.
He told officials that he had acted quickly, having learned just 10 minutes before that Chauvin would be housed at the jail, and was concerned about how that might affect employees of colour already traumatised by days of destructive protests and looting across the Twin Cities.
But Bonnie Smith, a Minneapolis attorney representing the eight officers, called that ‘‘a new defence,’’ saying her clients had never heard Lydon, who has since been demoted, express concerns about their mental health.
She also disputed Lydon’s claims that he had moved to reverse the policy of segregating minority officers, noting that her clients said they had been reassigned to new shifts during the roughly 48 hours Chauvin spent at the jail before ultimately being transferred to the Oak Park Heights state prison, where he is being held on murder charges for his role in Floyd’s May 25 death.
The complaints are likely to add fuel to allegations that Chauvin was given special treatment in the case, including being reassigned to a jail outside Hennepin County, where he and the three other officers implicated in Floyd’s death are charged.
A spokesman for the sheriff’s office did not comment on the allegation that an officer allowed Chauvin to use her phone but said Sheriff Bob Fletcher is ‘‘reviewing the matter to determine any additional action’’.
– Washington Post