Federal grand jury charges 4 former Minneapolis cops with violating George Floyd’s civil rights — Chauvin also charged in teen arrest

A federal grand jury has indicted Derek Chauvin and three other former Minneapolis police officers for violating the civil rights of George Floyd, the Black man whose videotaped death last May during an arrest sparked nationwide protests and demands for the reform of police departments.

Chauvin separately was charged in another federal indictment with violating the civil rights of a 14-year Minneapolis boy during a September 2017 arrest by holding the boy by the neck and hitting him multiple times in the head with a flashlight “without legal justification.”

The new criminal charges revealed Friday come nearly three weeks after Chauvin was convicted at a state trial of murder and manslaughter in the death of Floyd, and three months before the other ex-officers are due to face another state trial for his death.

The federal indictment accuses Chauvin — who held his knee on or around the neck of a handcuffed and prone Floyd for more than nine minutes — of killing the 46-year-old while violating his rights to be protected from use of unreasonable force by a police officer.

It also accuses two of Chauvin’s fellow cops — Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng — of “willfully” failing to intervene to stop Chauvin from using unreasonable force, a failure that also led to Floyd’s death.

All three ex-officers, along with the fourth, Thomas Lane, are accused of letting Floyd die by willfully failing to aid him when they saw Floyd “lying on the ground in clear need of medical care.”

Floyd was being detained by the cops on suspicion of having used a counterfeit bill in a purchase.

In the separate federal indictment related to his arrest of the 14-year-old, Chauvin likewise is accused of holding his knee on the neck and upper back of the boy, even after the teen “was lying prone, handcuffed, and unresisting.”

“This offense resulted in bodily injury to” the boy, that indictment says.

Chauvin, whose actions against the boy were caught on camera, was responding to a call by a woman who said that her son and daughter had assaulted her, the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper has reported. The Star Tribune also reported that Chauvin struck the boy in the head repeatedly with his flashlight after the boy refused to get up off the floor, and then choked the boy unconscious with his knee.

The federal criminal indictments are separate from a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the practices of the Minneapolis Police Department that was announced by Attorney General Merrick Garland a day after Chauvin was convicted.

Garland said that probe will assess whether the MPD “engages in a pattern or practice of using excessive force, including during protests.”

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/federal-grand-jury-charges-4-former-minneapolis-cops-with-violating-george-floyds-civil-rights-ap-reports.html