MINNEAPOLIS (CN) — Two of Derek Chauvin’s superiors in the Minneapolis Police Department took the stand Friday in his murder trial for the death of George Floyd, describing their handling of the scene at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in the aftermath of Floyd’s deadly arrest and discussing the responsibilities of officers in the course of an arrest.
One of those officers, the MPD’s most senior officer and a homicide lieutenant, said that Chauvin’s use of force against Floyd was “totally unnecessary.” That characterization echoed Wednesday’s testimony from Chauvin’s former supervisor, who said that in the same situation he would have ended his use of force when Floyd stopped offering resistance.
Sergeant Jon Edwards was leading the night shift, or “dogwatch,” out of MPD’s 3rd Precinct the night of May 25, 2020. He started testimony Friday morning with a rundown of his experience after taking over that night.
The shift started at 8:30 p.m.. At that time, paramedics had just arrived at 38th and Chicago and removed Chauvin from Floyd’s neck. Edwards said he received news of the event from mid-watch sergeant David Pleoger, who called him from the hospital where he, Chauvin and fellow officer Tou Thao were waiting for news about Floyd’s condition.
Edwards said Ploeger told him that the situation could soon become a “critical incident,” a broad term for happenings including the death or serious injury of an officer or someone in police custody. Ploeger asked Edwards to lock down the scene, he said, and he did so after arriving around 9:35 p.m.
There he met J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, two rookie cops who held down Floyd’s back and legs while Chauvin knelt on his neck. Kueng and Lane, along with Thao, are scheduled to go to trial on aiding-and-abetting charges for Floyd’s death in August. At that time they were the only officers on the scene, he said. He called more of his squad to the intersection, and the whole group began work preparing the scene for investigation.
"The crime scene is supposed to be secured, which means locked down, and that is for the purpose of preserving any evidence that may be there,” Edwards said.
Shortly afterward, Lieutenant Richard Zimmerman of the city’s homicide squad arrived. Zimmerman said he was MPD’s most senior officer, having joined the department in 1985 after a four-year stint as a sheriff’s deputy in southern Minnesota. He took over the scene from Edwards briefly before turning it over to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension after learning that Floyd had died, he said.
In his testimony, Zimmerman discussed sending Kueng and Lane to City Hall with an escort, where they would be interviewed by investigators. Going over body camera footage, he also identified several officers for Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank.
The scene set, Frank turned to Zimmerman’s training and experience with MPD’s use-of-force practices. Force, Zimmerman said, is based on a continuum of escalation in which deadly force is only permissible in response to danger. Placing a knee on Floyd’s neck, he said, constituted deadly force.
“First of all, holding him down to the ground face down, and putting your knee on the neck for that amount of time is just uncalled for,” Zimmerman said. “I saw no reason why the officers felt they were in danger, if that’s what they felt, and that’s what they would have to feel to be able to use that kind of force.”
He also said that placing handcuffed subjects in a prone position, as Floyd was, could endanger them by making it difficult to breathe. In general, Zimmerman maintained, using deadly force on a handcuffed person was never necessary.