Defense in Floyd’s killing: Police were inadequately trained

A defense attorney at the federal trial of three former Minneapolis police officers charged with violating George Floyd’s civil rights said during closing arguments Tuesday that his client’s training was inadequate to help him understand what was happening.

J. Alexander Kueng is charged along with Tou Thao and Thomas Lane with depriving Floyd of his right to medical care when Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes as the 46-yearold Black man pleaded for air before going silent. Kueng and Thao are also charged with failing to intervene to stop Chauvin during the May 25, 2020, killing that triggered protests worldwide and a reexamination of racism and policing.

Kueng’s attorney, Tom Plunkett, hammered away at a major part of the defense contention that the officers were inadequately trained in intervention and that they deferred to Chauvin, who was the senior officer on the scene.

“I’m not trying to say he wasn’t trained,” Plunkett said. “I’m saying the training was inadequate to help him see, perceive and understand what was happening here.”

Earlier, Thao’s attorney, Robert Paule said his client, Tou Thao, thought officers were doing what they believed was best for Floyd — holding him until paramedics arrived.

Thao was watching bystanders and traffic as the other officers held down Floyd. Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back and Lane held his legs.

The charges include language that the officers “willfully” deprived Floyd of his constitutional rights.

That means jurors must find that officers acted “with a bad purpose or improper motive to disobey or disregard the law,” Paule said.

He noted that Thao increased the urgency of an ambulance call for Floyd, something he said was clearly “not for a bad purpose.” He also said that Thao reasonably believed Floyd was on drugs and needed to be restrained until medical assistance arrived, there was no bad purpose.

“You have to look at my client’s intentions within the context of willfulness,” he said.

Thao and Chauvin went to the scene to help Kueng and Lane, who were rookies, after they responded to a call that Floyd used a counterfeit $20 bill at a corner store. Floyd struggled with officers as they tried to put him in a police SUV.

Earlier, prosecutor Manda Sertich singled out each former officer as the government wrapped up its case in the monthlong trial.

Thao stared directly at Chauvin and ignored bystanders’ pleas to help a man who was dying “right before their eyes,” Sertich said.

She said Kueng casually picked gravel from a police SUV’s tire as Chauvin “mocked George Floyd’s pleas by saying it took a heck of a lot of oxygen to keep talking.”

And Lane voiced concerns that showed he knew Floyd was in distress but “did nothing to give Mr. Floyd the medical aid he knew Mr. Floyd so desperately needed,” the prosecutor said.