‘Violated policy’
Top cop gives damning testimony vs. Chauvin
Minneapolis’ top cop testified Monday that Derek Chauvin “absolutely” violated department policy by kneeling on George Floyd’s neck until the handcuffed Black man’s heart stopped beating.
In scathing testimony that undermined a linchpin of Chauvin’s defense, Chief Medaria Arradondo said the ex-cop not only ignored his training but also the “sanctity of life” when he used an excessively long and powerful neck restraint during the fatal caught-on-video arrest last May 25.
Arradondo told jurors that what he saw on the harrowing bystander video “is not what we teach.”
“I absolutely agree that violates our policy,” he responded when asked if the neck restraint that lasted 9 minutes and 29 seconds was within department guidelines.
“Once Mr. Floyd had stopped resisting, and certainly once he was in distress and trying to verbalize that, that should have stopped,” the police chief testified as the second week of Chauvin’s Minneapolis murder trial got underway.
“There is an initial reasonableness in trying to just get him under control in the first few seconds. But once there was no longer any resistance, and clearly when Mr. Floyd was no longer responsive and even motionless, to continue to apply that level of force to a person proned out, handcuffed behind their back — that in no way, shape or form is anything that is by policy,” he said.
“That action is not and when we talk about the framework of our sanctity of life and when we talk about the principles and values that we have, that action goes contrary to what we’re talking about,” he said at another point in his sworn testimony.
Defense lawyer Eric Nelson argued in his opening statement last week that police use of force “is not attractive,” but that Chauvin “did exactly what he had been trained to do over the course of his 19year career.”
As he cross-examined Arradondo on Monday, Nelson stressed another pillar of his defense strategy, saying police deescalation, often have to make “split-second decisions” in “rapidly evolving” situations.
Arradondo barely budged, saying that while it’s true handcuffed suspects sometimes still pose a threat, that wasn’t the case with Floyd, in his opinion.
The police chief’s damaging testimony came after the emergency room doctor who formally pronounced Floyd dead described trying to resuscitate Floyd when he ended up at Hennepin County Medical Center with no pulse.
Under questioning by state prosecutor Jerry Blackwell, Dr. Bradford Langenfeld said it was his understanding that no bystanders or cops had performed CPR on Floyd before paramedics arrived, an action he said could have increased Floyd’s chance of survival.
Arradondo also testified that Chauvin “violated our policy” by not rendering aid.
“It’s well known that any amount of time that a patient spends in cardiac arrest without immediate CPR markedly decreases the chance … of a good outcome,” Langenfeld said, noting that there is an approximate 10% to 15% decrease in survival for every minute that CPR is not administered.
Langenfeld, who was a senior medical resident the night of Floyd’s death, said he believed Floyd died due to oxygen deficiency, or “asphyxia.”
He testified that he never heard from anyone that night that the 46-year-old patient may have suffered a possible overdose or heart attack — complicating two other theories pushed by the defense.
Chauvin, the first ex-cop to face trial in the case, is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter for the deadly arrest that shocked the world and sparked massive protests.
Before witness testimony resumed Monday, Judge Peter Cahill conducted a Schwartz hearing, a procedure for investigating an allegation of jury misconduct or to determine whether an outside influence might compromise a trial’s integrity. The hearing was not broadcast on video or audio, but Cahill said he found no misconduct and would take no action on the matter.
It was not immediately clear what prompted that hearing.