After Chauvin's conviction for Floyd murder, DOJ weighs charging him for 2017 incident involving Black teen: Source
Late last year, as a team of Minnesota state prosecutors was preparing for the trial that would ultimately convict former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd, they received a series of videos depicting Chauvin's handling of another case three years earlier that by their own description shocked them.
The videos, from Sept. 4, 2017, allegedly showed Chauvin striking a Black teenager in the head so hard that the boy needed stitches, then allegedly holding the boy down with his knee for nearly 17 minutes, and allegedly ignoring complaints from the boy that he couldn't breathe.
"Those videos show a far more violent and forceful treatment of this child than Chauvin describes in his report [of the incident]," Matthew Frank, one of the state prosecutors, wrote in a court filing at the time.
Now, the U.S. Justice Department may do something that state prosecutors never did: charge Chauvin for the 2017 incident.
Two months ago, federal prosecutors in Minneapolis brought witnesses before a federal grand jury to provide testimony related to the incident, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported at the time. And this week, a source informed of the probe told ABC News that the investigation is still underway, with the Justice Department still weighing whether to bring federal charges against Chauvin for both the 2017 incident and George Floyd's death.
MORE: Derek Chauvin to be sentenced for killing of George Floyd on June 16
Officials at the Minneapolis Police Department were recently briefed on the federal government's interest in the 2017 incident, a move that came before the Justice Department this week launched a sweeping investigation of MPD's policing practices, ABC News was told.
"We will assist the DOJ with anything that they need, and the chief has pledged full cooperation with any investigating agency," MPD spokesman John Elder said, speaking generally of any requests made related to police conduct.
Months before the start of the trial against Chauvin, which culminated in Tuesday's conviction, state prosecutors wanted to describe the 2017 incident to the jury to show a pattern in Chauvin's conduct, but the judge presiding over the case refused to let prosecutors bring it up.
Nevertheless, in court documents filed before the judge's final ruling on the matter, Frank said videos of the incident captured by body-worn cameras "show Chauvin's use of unreasonable force towards this child and complete disdain for his well-being."
MORE: Derek Chauvin found guilty on all counts in death of George Floyd
According to Frank's account of the incident, Chauvin and another Minneapolis police officer were dispatched to a home where a woman claimed she had been attacked by her 14-year-old son and young daughter.
After officers entered the home and spoke to the woman, they ordered the son to lie on the ground, but he refused. Within seconds, Chauvin hit the teenager with his flashlight, grabbed the teenager's throat, hit him again with the flashlight, and then "applied a neck restraint, causing the child to lose consciousness and go to the ground," according to Frank's account of the videos, detailed in a filing seeking permission to raise the incident during trial.
"Chauvin and [the other officer] placed [the teenager] in the prone position and handcuffed him behind his back while the teenager's mother pleaded with them not to kill her son and told her son to stop resisting," Frank wrote, noting that at one point the teenager's ear began bleeding. "About a minute after going to the ground, the child began repeatedly telling the officers that he could not breathe, and his mother told Chauvin to take his knee off her son."
About eight minutes in, Chauvin moved his knee to the teenager's upper back and left it there for nine more minutes, according to Frank.
Eventually, Chauvin told the teenager he was under arrest for domestic assault and obstruction with force. The two officers then helped the teenager to an ambulance, which took him to a hospital to receive stitches, Frank wrote.
MORE: DOJ to probe if excessive force, 'unlawful policing' used in Minneapolis
In his court filing, Frank said Chauvin's handling of the 14-year-old boy mirrored Chauvin's actions with Floyd, when Chauvin pinned Floyd's neck under his knee for more than eight minutes after responding to a call at a convenience store where Floyd allegedly used a counterfeit $20 bill.
"As was true with the conduct with George Floyd, Chauvin rapidly escalated his use of force for a relatively minor offense," Frank wrote. "Just like with Floyd, Chauvin used an unreasonable amount of force without regard for the need for that level of force or the victim's well-being. Just like with Floyd, when the child was slow to comply with Chauvin and [the other officer's] instructions, Chauvin grabbed the child by the throat, forced him to the ground in the prone position, and placed his knee on the child's neck with so much force that the child began to cry out in pain and tell Chauvin he could not breathe."
Last year, as Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd's neck, Floyd repeatedly pleaded, "I can't breathe."
But Chauvin's defense attorney Eric Nelson disputed such comparisons, insisting, "[T]here is no marked similarity between [the 2017 incident] and the George Floyd incident."
In his own court filing objecting to the prosecution team's efforts, Nelson insisted that during the 2017 incident Chauvin acted according to MPD policy by using a neck restraint against someone "actively resisting" arrest, which MPD policy at the time allowed officers to do, Nelson wrote.
In addition, Nelson noted, "a mother had been physically assaulted by her children," and when Chauvin's use of force was reported to supervisors, it was "cleared."
"It was reasonable and authorized under the law as well as MPD policy," Nelson said.
MORE: Police officials respond to guilty verdict in Derek Chauvin trial
The judge presiding over the case agreed with Nelson that the jury should not hear about the 2017 incident, so prosecutors were blocked from bringing it up during Chauvin's trial.
Three other officers who were with Chauvin at the scene last year when Floyd died have been charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin's fatal actions. They are scheduled to stand trial in August.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.
MORE: Here's how Derek Chauvin could try to get verdict overturned on appeal
On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department was launching a civil investigation -- not a criminal probe -- to determine if the Minneapolis Police Department "engages in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing," including whether Minneapolis police routinely use excessive force and engage in discriminatory conduct.
The wide-ranging civil investigation "is separate from and independent of the federal criminal investigation into the death of George Floyd that the Justice Department has previously announced," Garland said.
Nelson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment from ABC News.
ABC News' Matthew Stone contributed to this report.
After Chauvin's conviction for Floyd murder, DOJ weighs charging him for 2017 incident involving Black teen: Source originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Alternate Juror In Derek Chauvin Trial Explains What Swayed Her
Lisa Christensen had no say in the final outcome of the trial for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin that ended Tuesday with his conviction on all three counts.
As an alternate juror, she sat alongside the other members of the jury ― who have not spoken publicly ― for three weeks listening to arguments for both sides. Chauvin is now awaiting sentencing for the murder of George Floyd, the Black man whom he restrained by pinning to the pavement for nearly 10 minutes last spring.
On Thursday, Christensen spoke to reporters about her view from the bench, saying that she was happy with how the trial turned out.
“I felt he was guilty,” she told “CBS This Morning.”
She said it felt as if Chauvin “wasn’t taking the warnings” that Floyd’s life was at risk seriously.
“I just don’t understand how it got from a counterfeit $20 bill to a death. It kind of shocks me,” Christensen said.
One expert witness in particular swayed her ― Dr. Martin Tobin, a renowned pulmonologist called by the prosecution to explain precisely how Floyd died on May 25, 2020.
Tobin testified for hours, analyzing footage of the incident obtained from officers’ body cameras and bystanders in order to illustrate how Floyd struggled to draw air into his lungs and then, after several minutes, died.
“I just felt like the prosecution made a really good, strong argument. Dr. Tobin was the one that really did it for me. He explained everything. I understood it down to where he said this is the moment that he lost his life ― really got to me,” Christensen said on CBS.
She was also moved by testimony from bystander Darnella Frazier, the teen who recorded the first video of Floyd’s death seen around the world. On the stand, Frazier explained how she felt guilty that she could not have done more to help Floyd, saying he reminded her of her own Black loved ones.
“Without her, I don’t think this would have been possible,” Christensen said of Frazier.
In her view, defense attorney Eric Nelson “overpromised in the beginning and didn’t live up to what he said he was going to do” to make his argument. Throughout the trial, Nelson attempted to convince the jurors that Floyd’s preexisting heart conditions and the traces of drugs found in his system were his primary cause of death.
Chauvin had pleaded not guilty to all three charges: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
A photograph of Christensen’s notes obtained by KARE 11, a Minneapolis NBC affiliate, showed how evidence brought by Chauvin’s defense might have actually worked against him.
Nelson showed the jury body camera footage of an earlier run-in between Floyd and Minneapolis police officers from 2019, when he was taken into custody from the passenger seat of a vehicle. Floyd admitted to having taken an opioid that day because he had trouble with addiction.
“George didn’t die that day even though this arrest was similar to May 25th 2020,” she wrote, echoing a prosecutor’s take on the 2019 incident.
Christensen was not a part of the final deliberations, and said that initially, she would not have chosen to be part of the jury due to the contentious and highly public nature of the trial. But she heard everything each side had to say and formed an opinion anyway, as she was only informed of her status as an alternate juror when both sides had rested their case.
She told KARE 11 that her “heart broke a little bit” when Judge Peter Cahill told her she was actually an alternate juror.
In her view the jurors took their responsibilities seriously and did not socialize much with one another between proceedings in the trial.
While the 12 seated members of the jury are now free to openly discuss their participation in the case, none have done so, and Cahill has not yet revealed their identities. Judges have the power to shield juries in certain cases where safety may be a concern.
Related...
Respiratory Expert: George Floyd Died Of Asphyxia As A Result Of Chauvin's Actions
Derek Chauvin Found Guilty On All Charges In George Floyd's Death
Teen Who Filmed George Floyd And Other Bystanders React To Chauvin's Guilty Verdict
Philonise Floyd Says Teenager Who Filmed His Brother's Murder 'Changed The World'
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
After Ma'Khia Bryant's killing, Ohio State University students demand the college sever ties with Columbus police
Destiny Brown, a senior at the Ohio State University, breathed a sigh of relief in her dorm room on Tuesday when the guilty verdict came down for former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. But the moment of respite proved short-lived. Minutes later, she scrolled on Twitter and learned that a 16-year-old Black girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, had been shot and killed that afternoon by Columbus police.
“I can’t even begin to process the fact that we live in a world where people’s lives — regardless of what they’re doing, what they have going on, guilty or not, innocent or not — their lives just do not matter,” Brown told Yahoo News. “It doesn’t make sense to me and never will.”
Overcome with a feeling of helplessness, Brown fired off a group text message to her friends Tuesday evening. “I’m ready to organize again,” she told them.
In a matter of hours, Brown and her friends had planned a sit-in to be held the following day at the Ohio Union, the university’s student center in Columbus. Their goal, Brown said, was simple: to demand that the school sever ties with Columbus police over Bryant’s killing and its mistreatment of students of color.
On Wednesday afternoon, in the midst of finals week, more than 400 Ohio State University students, staff and faculty members attended the sit-in, where attendees chanted, “Say her name” and “Black Lives Matter.” The participants also observed 16 minutes of silence to mark the number of years Bryant had lived. Organizers told the crowd that the protest wasn’t for police reform but for abolition. Following the demonstration, the crowd marched to the Ohio Statehouse, chanting Bryant’s name.
But with a student enrollment surpassing 60,000 on the Columbus campus alone, many OSU students disagreed with the protests.
“A protest can get out of hand just as much as a party can,” one student wrote on the OSU Undergraduate Student Government Instagram. “It’s funny that the ‘peaceful’ protests get out of hand far more often than parties.”
As of Friday afternoon, many details surrounding Bryant’s death remained unclear. Her family says she called police about 4:30 p.m. to report that a group of “older kids” was threatening her. Police arrived at the home where she lived at 4:44 p.m., and in police body camera footage, Bryant is seen holding a knife while fighting with another girl.
An officer approaches the girls, asking, “What’s going on?” before yelling at them to “Get down!” three times.
Moments later Bryant lunges at a second girl as a Columbus officer, later identified as Nicholas Reardon, fires four shots at Bryant.
“She’s just a kid,” a bystander is heard saying. “Damn, are you stupid?”
Bryant falls to the ground as Reardon says, “She came at her with a knife.”
Paramedics arrived at the scene in six minutes and attempted lifesaving measures “almost immediately,” said interim Police Chief Michael Woods, but they were unable to save Bryant.
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther called the shooting a “tragic day” and said the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation will look into the officer’s actions. Reardon has been taken off street duty pending the results of the investigation.
The shooting took place just 30 minutes before the guilty verdict was read in a Minneapolis courtroom against former Police Officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murdering George Floyd. With emotions running high over that case and details of Bryant’s encounter with police scarce, her death was quickly held up as yet another example of racist policing.
“As we breathed a collective sigh of relief today, a community in Columbus felt the sting of another police shooting,” Floyd family attorney Ben Crump tweeted Tuesday. “Another child lost! Another hashtag.”
Columbus police did not respond to Yahoo News’ request for comment. City officials, meanwhile, have asked the public to avoid drawing conclusions until all the facts in the case come out.
Some conservative commentators, however, have already made up their minds about the incident, hailing Reardon as a “national hero.”
"This incident isn't as clear cut as the murder of George Floyd or other police shootings that spurred the events of last summer," Cal Ruebensaal, chairman of the Ohio State College Republicans told Yahoo News in an email. "I personally believe that the officer did what he was trained to do and therefore no blame should befall him."
Brown, however, believes more could have been done to deescalate the situation.
“You have a choice,” she said. “There’s a gun and there’s a Taser. He made that choice to pick the gun up.”
When Woods was asked by reporters about the policy on the use of Tasers versus handguns, he declined to comment on this specific incident but did offer insight into protocol.
“If there’s not deadly force being perpetrated on someone else at that time, an officer may have the opportunity to have cover distance and time to use a Taser,” he said Wednesday. “But if those things are not present, and there’s an active assault going on in which someone could lose their life, the officer can use their firearm to protect that third person.”
At Wednesday’s sit-in event, student speakers called out what they felt was a double standard by Columbus police, which is 85 percent white in a community where 30 percent of residents are Black. Data from Mapping Police Violence, a site that tracks police killings, shows that Black people in Columbus are also five times as likely to be killed by police than their white peers. In 2017, Columbus police ranked No. 1 in police killings of Black people among the country’s 15 largest cities.
So far, the school has not given any indication it will agree to the demands of the student activists to sever ties with the city’s police department. In a statement to Yahoo News, the university said it supports both students and faculty exercising their First Amendment rights.
“Ohio State supports the right of our students, faculty and staff to peacefully express their views and to speak out about issues that are important to them,” the statement read. “Freedom of speech and civic engagement are central to our values as an institution of higher education.”
The university also explained the nature of its relationship with the Columbus police.
“The Ohio State University Police Division (OSUPD) is the primary law enforcement agency on all of our campuses,” the statement continued. “In Columbus, we contract with the Columbus Division of Police (CPD) for specific services, largely traffic control for athletics events. We also have a mutual-aid agreement in place that allows our OSUPD to assist CPD off campus.”
But some students say this isn’t enough.
“Black students here continue to feel left out as repeated instances of violence against our community go unaddressed and disregarded,” said a Black female junior at OSU, who agreed to talk to Yahoo News on the condition of anonymity.
“This week was truly, and unfortunately, a perfect example. The beginning of the week saw a largely white OSU student crowd destroying property during ChittFest [a local block party], while CPD turned an eye. The killing of Ma’Khia Bryant … in the same week really struck a nerve with Black students on campus,” she added. “All we have asked of our university is to truly make us feel safe, seen and heard by divesting from CPD.”
“As a white student, I will never be able to understand the pain and suffering of the Black community,” Claire Pitrof, a senior, told Yahoo News. “I understand that part of my role as an ally to this movement is to show up, to stand with the Black community and demand justice. That is what yesterday [Wednesday’s demonstration] was about.”
But Pitrof also acknowledged a “split” on campus between those who are seeking reforms and those who advocate for something more drastic.
“I know there are plenty of students who feel that reform is the appropriate response to police brutality, whereas those of us at the protest yesterday demanded abolition,” she said.
For Brown, the divide is stark and was epitomized by the fact that fewer than 1,000 students turned out for Wednesday’s demonstration.
“The dynamic on campus is clearly divided,” she said. “The majority of students do not feel like this affects them. The majority of students have this privilege and this entitlement that they only have to exist as students and don't have to exist as Black people that are seeing children and other people just being slammed by police and wondering if they're next.”
Not all students agree there is a need for police reform.
"As an Asian American, it’s all about following the law and having some respect,” one student wrote on Instagram. “I’m not targeted by police because I don’t break laws. It’s that simple."
Ruebensaal, of the College Republicans, believes, "If we keep treating justified police actions this way, there won't be any cops anymore...just coroners."
Pranav Jani, an associate professor of English at the university, was one of many faculty members at Wednesday's sit-in.
“This [protest] happened for two reasons: the national mobilizations around the murder of George Floyd, and specific local incidents, including the long history of the violence and racism of Columbus police and the targeting of protesters, including our students, last summer,” Jani told Yahoo News. “Today, people want to see some real change, and part of that is rejecting a system of policing that brings safety only for some of us.”
Many students who participated in Wednesday’s sit-in and march had final exams to study for and papers to write, but they chose to raise their voices instead.
“We should have been studying for finals yesterday,” the junior added. “None of us want to be activists, none of us planned to spend our afternoon marching to the Statehouse, but we felt we had to to stand our ground and let it be known that the inaction we’ve seen thus far is unacceptable.”
Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Stephen Zenner/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images (2)
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