Derek Chauvin and the three other former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s death have now been indicted on federal charges for violating his civil rights.
A federal grand jury indicted Derek Chauvin, 45, Thomas Lane, 38, J Alexander Kueng, 27, and Tou Thao, 35, accusing them of willfully infringing George Floyd’s civil rights as he was restrained face down on the sidewalk, gasping for air.
All four cops have been charged with failing to give medical attention to George Floyd as he lay dying on the streets of Minneapolis last May.
Chauvin, Thao and Kueng are also charged with infringing George Floyd’s right to be free from extreme seizure and unnecessary restraint.
Derek Chauvin was also charged in a second indictment, over a 2017 incident where he knelt on a black 14-year-old boy’s neck for almost 17 minutes. This is the first time the convicted killer has ever faced charges over this incident.
The federal civil rights charges, similar to hate crimes, are separate from the state’s which led to Derek Chauvin’s trial and murder conviction last month.
The other three officers face trial together on August 23 on state charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and manslaughter.
The two indictments were unsealed on Friday.
Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J Kueng appeared by videoconference in US District Court in Minneapolis, while Derek Chauvin was not part of the court appearance.
The first indictment contained three counts.
The indictment reads that count one of the indictment claims that on May 25, 2020, Derek Chauvin held his left knee across George Floyd’s neck, and his right knee on George Floyd’s back and arm, as George Floyd lay on the ground, handcuffed and unresisting, and Derek Chauvin kept his knees on Mr Floyd’s neck and body even after George Floyd became unresponsive.
This infringed George Floyd’s constitutional right to be free from the use of extreme restraint by a police officer that resulted in George Floyd’s injury and death.
The second count charges Thao and Kueng for failing to intervene to prevent Derek Chauvan’s use of extreme force.
The third count alleges all four cops saw George Floyd lying on the ground in obvious need of medical attention and failed to help him, and according to the indictment, by doing so, all four defendants willfully denied George Floyd his constitutional right not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law, which included the arrestee’s right to be free from a police officer’s deliberate disregard to his serious medical need.
George Floyd may have committed a wrongful movement, but it still didn’t give the police the freedom to kill him, irrelevant to his previous history.
The money may have been counterfeit but it can’t be proved that George Floyd knew it was counterfeit. How many people have been walking about with counterfeit money in their pocketbook and not known about it? And does this mean that every person who’s walking around with counterfeit money should be dragged to the ground with a knee on their neck until they are dead? And if people say yes, then this was just a witch hunt! But of course, stupid comments will continue.
Sadly America is no longer America, and individual liberty in the US is dead, and this should not be about race, it should just be about police brutality, and police brutality is important because the truth is white people are not targeted in the same way.
And these cops were all accessories to the fact, and they should all be charged with murder and convicted, and these four officers have created the biggest race storm in history, and the lesson will still not be learnt.
These four thought it was a great idea to sit on a suspect who could not defend himself until he died and YOU could be next!
