“Being black in America should not be a death sentence,” the city’s mayor said as video of the arrest was widely shared.
The F.B.I. and Minnesota law enforcement authorities are investigating the arrest of a black man who died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by an officer’s knee, in an episode that was recorded on video by a bystander and that sparked large protests in Minneapolis on Tuesday.
After the graphic video circulated widely on social media, the mayor denounced the actions of the four officers who were involved and said on Tuesday afternoon that they had been fired. He identified the victim as George Floyd.
Mr. Floyd, 46, a resident of St. Louis Park, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb, was pronounced dead at 9:25 p.m. Monday at Hennepin County Medical Center, according to the medical examiner.
Bystanders plead and curse, begging the officer to stop and telling him the man’s nose is bleeding. Another officer faces the people gathered on the sidewalk. An ambulance medic arrives and, reaching under the officer’s knee, feels for a pulse on the man’s neck.
The medic turns away, and a stretcher is wheeled over. The arrested man is then rolled onto the stretcher, loaded into an ambulance and taken away.
Jovanni Thunstrom, who employed Mr. Floyd as a bouncer at his restaurant, Conga Latin Bistro, said in an interview Tuesday that he was in disbelief when he saw the video.
“It’s hard to believe a police officer would do that,” said Mr. Thunstrom, who was also Mr. Floyd’s landlord. “He wasn’t a threat to justify excessive force used on him.”
Mr. Thunstrom said that Mr. Floyd had become a friend during the five years that he worked for him and the four years that he rented a duplex unit from him in St. Louis Park.
“No one had nothing bad to say about him,” he said. “They all are shocked he’s dead. He never caused a fight or was rude to people.”
The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis did not immediately respond.
Mr. Thunstrom, the restaurant owner, said that the last time he had heard from Mr. Floyd was when he paid his rent last week and told him that he was looking for a job. The restaurant where Mr. Floyd worked has been closed to on-site dining since March because of the coronavirus pandemic, he said.Derek Chauvin, the officer seen in the video with his knee on Floyd’s neck as Floyd begs for mercy and repeatedly says, “I can’t breathe,” had at least 12 complaints filed against him in his 19 years on the job and was involved in other shootings as well.
In 2008, Chauvin shot 21-year-old Ira Toles after responding to a domestic assault call, Pioneer Press reported at the time. Toles was charged with two counts of resisting arrest.
And in 2011, Chauvin was one of five officers placed on leave after another non-fatal shooting, the Daily Beast reported. Chauvin did not fire his gun that time.
Minneapolis Police, Long Accused of Racism, Face Wrath of Wounded City
Protesters returned to the streets on Wednesday, a day after George Floyd’s death. The city’s Police Department has received many excessive force complaints, especially by black residents.
Earlier in his career, the African-American chief of the Minneapolis police sued his own department, accusing the leadership of tolerating racism. Once he took charge, he vowed to make mending relations with the city’s black residents a priority.
But the department, with its long history of accusations of abuse, finds itself under siege again after a video captured a black man suffocating beneath the knee of a white officer, with three other officers failing to intervene.
Medaria Arradondo, the chief, swiftly fired all four men on Tuesday and called for an F.B.I. investigation once the video showed that the official police account of the arrest of the man, George Floyd, bore little resemblance to what actually occurred.
But quelling the community rage has been a challenge.
Hundreds of protesters poured into the Minneapolis streets for a second night on Wednesday, with officers using tear gas and firing rubber bullets into the crowds. Images on television and social media revealed at least one business, an auto parts store, on fire and people carrying goods out of a store that had been vandalized.
Hundreds of protesters poured into the Minneapolis streets for a second night on Wednesday, with officers using tear gas and firing rubber bullets into the crowds. Images on television and social media revealed at least one business, an auto parts store, on fire and people carrying goods out of a store that had been vandalized.
A police spokesman told reporters that Wednesday’s protests were not as peaceful, and that one person in the area had been fatally shot, although it was unclear if the death was directly related to the protests. “Tonight was a different night of protesting than it was just the night before,” said the spokesman, John Elder.
The chaos continued into Thursday morning, with additional reports of businesses burning. The Star Tribune posted video showing residents hosing down nearby homes in an effort to prevent them from catching fire.
Some demonstrators gathered at the house of the officer who detained Mr. Floyd and the house of the local prosecutor, according to The Star Tribune. There were also protests in Memphis and Los Angeles, where law enforcement faced off with those who had blocked the 101 Freeway downtown.
Mr. Floyd’s death — and the recent shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia — has also prompted comparisons to previous killings involving the police and black people, including those of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
Community activists are now calling for it to be federally reviewed, and for murder charges against the officers involved in Mr. Floyd’s arrest and death.
Excessive force complaints against Minneapolis officers have become commonplace, especially by African-American residents. One of the officers involved in Mr. Floyd’s death, a 19-year veteran of the department identified as Derek Chauvin, 44, had several complaints filed against him, three of which led to reprimands for his language and tone.
Chief Medaria Arradondo of the Minneapolis Police Department. He once accused the department in a lawsuit of a history of tolerating racist remarks and behavior.Credit...Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune, via Associated Press[/caption]
Yet there is a deep rift between the city’s police force — which also is predominantly white — and the community, one that seems to grow larger with each killing.
There was Justine Ruszczyk, a white woman who was fatally shot by a black police officer in 2017, and whose family was awarded $20 million in a settlement with the city three days after the officer was convicted of murder.
There was Thurman Blevins, a black man who begged two white police officers closing in on him, “Please don’t shoot me. Leave me alone,” in a fatal encounter captured on body-camera footage. His death two years ago led to protests across the city.
And there was Chiasher Fong Vue, a Hmong man who was killed in December during a shootout with nine officers, who fired more than 100 bullets, according to The Star Tribune.
Credit...Evan Frost/Minnesota Public Radio, via Associated Press
One of the biggest challenges to reforming the department, analysts say, is the city’s powerful police union. It established its power in local politics in the 1970s, when Charles A. Stenvig, a former head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, served three terms as mayor on a “law and order” platform.
Lt. Bob Kroll, the head of the union, was accused in Chief Arradondo’s lawsuit of calling a black congressman who was Muslim a “terrorist” and of wearing a motorcycle jacket with a badge that said “white power.” Lieutenant Kroll did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Protesters overrun a Minneapolis police building and set it aflame.
Protesters broke windows and charged over fences to breach a police precinct in Minneapolis and set it on fire late Thursday as officers retreated from violent confrontations that boiled over days after George Floyd died in police custody.
A demonstration near the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct grew more intense in the hours after prosecutors said they had not decided whether to charge an officer who had pressed his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for about eight minutes.
Some people tossed fireworks and other items toward officers, while the police fired projectiles back. The protests extended to many other cities, including New York, Denver, Phoenix and Columbus, Ohio, where scores of protesters tried to enter the statehouse.
In Minneapolis, police officers retreated from the Third Precinct in vehicles just after 10 p.m. local time as protesters broke into the building, where they smashed equipment, lit fires and set off fireworks, according to videos posted from the scene.
Footage from helicopter cameras showed nearby local businesses engulfed in flames. But firefighters from the Minneapolis Fire Department could not respond to the area because of safety concerns, Assistant Chief Bryan Tyner said in an email.
As the unrest escalated, 500 members of the Minnesota National Guard were sent to Minneapolis and St. Paul, the capital. Gov. Tim Walz had activated the soldiers and declared a state of emergency in the Twin Cities in the afternoon after he saw the level of destruction from Wednesday’s protest — buildings on fire, clashes with the police and looted stores.
There were also protests in the bordering city of St. Paul, where officers in riot gear skirmished with protesters as several businesses were vandalized, according to photographs posted online. Smoke could be seen billowing from a NAPA auto parts store, and the windows of a Goodwill store were broken. There were dozens of fires and more than 170 damaged or looted buildings, the police said, but no reports of serious injuries.