Three expolice officers indifferent to Floyd’s pleas, jury hears

ST. PAUL, Minn. —Three former Minneapolis officers broke the law by failing to stop Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd during an arrest and were indifferent to the handcuffed Black man's dying pleas, a prosecutor told a jury in opening statements in the federal trial on Monday.

Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane are charged with violating Floyd's civil rights during the arrest of the 46-yearold on a road outside a Minneapolis grocery store in May 2020, video of which sparked street protests against racism and police brutality around the world.

Federal prosecutor Samantha Trepel, from the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division, said the defendants had broken their oath with a callous indifference to Floyd. She said video captured how Kueng at times seemed more preoccupied with some gravel lodged in the tire of the nearby police car than the man beneath him repeatedly saying: “I can't breathe.”

Last year, the defendants' former colleague Derek Chauvin, 45, was found guilty of murder and manslaughter in Floyd's death at the end of a nationally televised state trial in April 2021, and a Minnesota judge sentenced him to 22-1/2 years in prison.

Chauvin, who is white, was also charged alongside his colleagues by federal prosecutors with violating Floyd's civil rights in their capacity as police officers. Chauvin changed his plea to guilty last December. Thao, Kueng and Lane, who could face years in prison if convicted, have all pleaded not guilty.

“For more than nine minutes, each of the three defendants made a conscious choice over and over again not to act,” Trepel told the jury. “They chose not to intervene and stop Chauvin as he killed a man slowly in front of their eyes on a public street in broad daylight.”

She said that the officers had sworn an oath to care for people in their custody, and were required by law to stop Chauvin.

Defence lawyers say the three defendants had a right and a duty to arrest Floyd on suspicion he used a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes, and were not criminally liable for Chauvin's conduct.