Minneapolis police chief testifies Derek Chauvin 'absolutely' violated department policies during George Floyd arrest

(Image credit: Court TV via AP, Pool)

published 5 April 2021

Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo took the witness stand on Monday as the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin continued.

Arradondo testified that Chauvin's actions during the arrest of George Floyd, including kneeling on Floyd's neck for over nine minutes, "absolutely" violated department policy. "That is not what we teach," Arradondo said.

Chauvin may have had reason to restrain Floyd forcefully in the "first few seconds" of the arrest, Arradondo clarified, but he said once Floyd "stopped resisting, and certainly once he was in distress and trying to verbalize that, that should have stopped."

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Arradondo, the city's first Black police chief, fired Chauvin and three other officers involved in the arrest within a day of Floyd's death. He has publicly referred to the incident as a "murder," The New York Times notes. Read more at The New York Times.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.