Police release personnel files of officers charged

The Minneapolis Police Department late Wednesday released 235 pages of personnel records for the four former officers charged in George Floyd’s killing on May 25, all of whom were fired after video of his death emerged the following day.

Three of the officers — Thomas Lane, 37; J. Alexander Kueng, 26; and Tou Thao, 34 — were charged Wednesday with aiding and abetting second-degree murder, court records show, and appeared in court Thursday. A judge set bail at $750,000 apiece.

The fourth officer, Derek Chauvin, 44, who was arrested last week, now faces an increased charge of second-degree murder and is scheduled to appear in court Monday.

Many of the pages of the personnel files were heavily redacted, but they revealed details of the officers’ lives before joining the department and during their time on the force.

Derek Chauvin

Chauvin appears to have been reprimanded and possibly suspended after a woman complained in 2007 that he needlessly removed her from her car, searched her and put her in the back of a squad car for driving 10 mph over the speed limit.

Chauvin was the subject of at least 17 misconduct complaints over two decades, but the woman’s complaint is the only one detailed in 79 pages of his heavily redacted personnel file. The file shows the complaint was upheld, and Chauvin was issued a letter of reprimand.

In one part of the records, the discipline imposed is listed as “letter of reprimand,” but Chauvin was also issued a “notice of suspension” in May 2008, just after the investigation into the complaint ended, that lists the same internal affairs case number.

Investigators wrote that there was no audio of the incident and that the dashcam “had been turned off during course of stop.”

The records say Chauvin admitted to leaving a microphone in the squad car during the traffic stop and “did not check” the dashcam at the start of his shift.

In applying to the Minneapolis Police Department, Chauvin said he had served as a member of the Army, working for a time as a member of the military police. He also said he had worked as a security guard and as a cook for McDonald’s and another restaurant in the mid-1990s. The records said he was hired by the department in January 2001 as a part-time community service officer.

J. Alexander Kueng

Kueng had been an officer with the department for less than six months. He joined the force as a cadet in February 2019 and became an officer Dec. 10, 2019, his personnel records show. He had previously worked as a community service officer with the department while he earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

He also worked as a security guard at a Macy’s and stocked shelves at a Target. He graduated from Minneapolis’ Patrick Henry High School in 2012.

Otherwise, most of his personnel file was blacked out, including basic details such as whether he had a driver’s license, whether he lived in Minneapolis, whether he had any convictions for a long list of crimes, whether he was a U.S. citizen, and what his college GPA was.

His file shows he was terminated May 26, the day after Floyd’s death, at 4:45 p.m. It says he was fired for substandard performance, misconduct and violations of the city’s use-of-force policy, including failure to stop another officer from applying inappropriate force.

Thomas Lane

Lane did not graduate from high school, his file shows, but he went on to get his GED, then an associate degree from Century College and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota in criminology.

He was accepted to the police academy in January 2019 but started working in the criminal justice system in 2017 as a probation officer. Lane previously worked a series of different jobs, from restaurant server to Home Depot sales associate. He volunteered at Ka Joog tutoring, working with Somali youths in Cedar Riverside.

Tou Thao

Thao held jobs at McDonald’s, at a grocery store as a stocker, and as a security guard before being hired in 2008 as a community service officer in Minneapolis. But he worked there less than two years before being laid off in late 2009 because of budget cuts. Almost two years later, in 2011, he was recalled then hired as a police officer in 2012.

Thao graduated in 2004 from Fridley High School and attended North Hennepin Community College, where he studied for an associate degree in law enforcement but never graduated, according to his file.

According to police department data, Thao faced at least six complaints in his career with the Minneapolis force and was the subject of a lawsuit that claimed he and another officer punched, kicked and kneed an African-American man, leaving the man with broken teeth and bruises.