The Minneapolis Police Department plans to pair new police officers with the “right individuals” in response to the death of George Floyd, who died while an officer knelt on his neck despite three other officers being on scene.
Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey told the Associated Press this week that the city is focused on putting rookies with the best possible veterans in the force in an effort to help novice police officers learn the ropes.
“We need to make sure that those who are in a supervisory role, those that are riding with new officers with new cadets, are the right individuals to be role models,” Frey said in an interview. “You learn from who your role models are, and that can be a good thing, and that can also be a bad thing.”
The move comes more than two months after Derek Chauvin, a field training officer, knelt on the neck of Floyd for nearly eight minutes while he was pinned on the ground. Two other rookie officers, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, and an eight-year police officer stood by but did not intervene or use de-escalation tactics. One younger officer asked Chauvin at the time about his restraint of Floyd but was disregarded.
The three aiding officers have been charged with aiding and abetting, while Chauvin was charged with second-degree murder for his alleged use of excessive force. Lane and Kueng’s lawyers defended the freshmen officers as having deferred to Chauvin at in the moment Floyd was apprehended since he was by far the most experienced officer on the scene that day, May 25.
Frey said he does not support calls to abolish the city’s police department.
“We should not go down the route of simply abolishing the police department,” Frey said. “What we need to see within this department, and within many departments throughout the country, is a full-on culture shift.”
