Minn. cop testifies he deferred to Chauvin, ‘my senior officer’

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A former Minneapolis police officer charged in George Floyd’s killing testified Wednesday that he deferred to Derek Chauvin because he was his senior officer and that’s what he had been trained to do.

J. Alexander Kueng is one of three former officers charged in federal court with violating Floyd’s constitutional rights.

Kueng testified that he was concerned about the officers’ inability to stop Floyd from thrashing around as they tried to arrest him after police responded to a 911 call about Floyd using a counterfeit $20 bill at a corner store. He said that when fellow Officer Thomas Lane suggested changing the restraint, Chauvin disagreed.

“He was my senior officer and I trusted his advice,” Kueng said.

Jurors hear of racial slurs used by Arbery’s killers

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Two of the three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery repeatedly used racial slurs in text messages and social media posts, including some violent comments by Arbery’s shooter about Black people, an FBI witness testified Wednesday in their federal hate crimes trial.

FBI intelligence analyst Amy Vaughan led the jury through more than two dozen conversations that Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan had with others, identified only by their initials, in the months and years before the 25-year-old Black man’s killing. The FBI wasn’t able to access the phone of Greg McMichael, Travis McMichael’s father, because it was encrypted, Vaughan said.

In text and Facebook conversations with friends, Travis McMichael frequently used the N-word to describe Black people.

Evidence presented in court Wednesday showed Bryan also used the N-word, but his preferred slur was a derogatory characterization of a Black person’s lips. Over a number of years, Bryan exchanged racist messages on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that mocked the holiday.

Greg McMichael posted a meme on Facebook in 2016 saying white Irish slaves were treated worse than any race in the U.S. but that the Irish aren’t asking for handouts.

“I ain’t really shocked,” Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery, told reporters outside the courthouse. Still, he said he didn’t realize “all that hate was in those three men.”