Minneapolis police chief says officer violated policy in use of force to restrain Floyd

Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo unequivocally told the court Monday afternoon that Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck as he died, violated the department’s policy in his use of force to restrain Floyd.

During the second week of witness testimony in the murder trial, Arradondo said Chauvin’s placement of his knee on Floyd’s neck was “not de-escalation” – as police are taught to prioritize in an encounter with a suspect – and was “contrary to what we’re taught” in terms of placing the sanctity of life above all else.

The police chief, who first explained existing and previous police department policies, including the use of neck restraints, was also asked to recall the moments that he first became aware of and reviewed video evidence of the incident.

As Arradondo, the Minneapolis police chief, sat being quizzed by prosecutors about officer policies and training, he read aloud a section from the unit’s use-of-force manual: Sanctity of life and the protection of the public shall be the cornerstones of the Minneapolis Police Department use-of-force policy.

Arradondo said the policy holds significant importance for how officers handle themselves when interacting with the public because how they use force will forever be a standard by which they are judged.

“While it is absolutely imperative that our officers go home at the end of their shift, we want to make sure and ensure that our community members go home, too,” he said. “So sanctity of life is absolutely vital that that is the pillar for our use of force.”

While questioning the Minneapolis police chief, Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, invoked the so-called “objectively reasonable” defense that can often be key to prosecutions of police.

This defense stems from the Supreme Court’s Graham v. Connor decision in 1989, which established that a police officer’s actions must be judged against what another reasonable officer would do when facing the same scenario.

“The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight,” the court ruled.

Experts have said that this defense has played a key role in many use-of-force cases involving police. Prosecutors have struggled to convict police in such cases, particularly those involving murder or manslaughter charges.

Police are allowed to use force, including deadly force, under the law. But experts and attorneys also say this latitude is not unlimited, and an officer should use as much force is needed and no more.

Earlier in the day, Bradford Langenfeld, the emergency physician who tried to revive Floyd at the hospital and later pronounced him dead, said Floyd probably died because he was deprived of oxygen. Defense attorneys have been trying to establish that drugs or other causes might have been responsible.

Langenfeld testified that Floyd arrived at the Hennepin County Medical Center on the night of May 25 without a heartbeat and suffering from a form of cardiac arrest most typically associated with asphyxiation or traumatic bleeding.

Under questioning from prosecutor Jerry Blackwell, Langenfeld described the details of Floyd’s condition upon arrival at the hospital emergency department and doctors’ efforts to restart his heart and save his life.

“For the majority of his time in our emergency department, he was in PEA arrest,” Langenfeld said, referring to pulseless electrical activity, which he said typically derives from a lack of oxygen to bodily tissue or from severe bleeding.

Blackwell asked whether Floyd was ever in a state in which he would have been considered “shockable” – in which the jolt of a defibrillator, for example, might have restarted his heart to beat on its own.

“No,” Langenfeld said.

Langenfeld, who noted that such a state is more typical of someone who has suffered a heart attack rather than asphyxiation, also said that Floyd did not appear to display the signs of “excited delirium” caused by drug use and that the paramedics did not report that to him.

“I didn’t have any reason to believe that that was the case here,” Langenfeld said.

He said that paramedics reported to have tried for 30 minutes to resuscitate Floyd, that a mechanical tool was used to pump Floyd’s heart artificially and that he administered two drugs – epinephrine and sodium bicarbonate – to try to revive him, to no avail.

Langenfeld, who at the time was still completing his residency, ultimately pronounced Floyd dead.

Earlier, the morning began with the prosecution and defense in a dispute over whether police officers will be allowed to give their opinion on what they would have done, and which types of training Chauvin received.

Judge Peter Cahill granted a motion by Chauvin’s defense attorney Eric Nelson to allow the jury to see the entirety of the officer’s body-worn camera footage, which includes a discussion between Chauvin and fellow officers about their belief that Floyd had passed a fraudulent bill to the cashier at Cup Foods. The prosecution argued this was “irrelevant” to Chauvin’s use of force.

This story was originally published April 5, 2021 at 4:59 PM.