The first witness in Derek Chauvin’s murder trial, a local 911 dispatcher, said she found the arrest of George Floyd troubling and alerted her supervisor with concerns.
“I first asked if the screens were frozen,” Jena Scurry, who has worked as a dispatcher on the force for seven years, testified on Monday about what she saw on city surveillance cameras. “I was told that it was not frozen.”
Scurry said something “was not right” about the way law enforcement, including former police officer Chauvin, was treating Floyd.
“It was an extended period of time,” she said about Chauvin’s restraint of Floyd. “It was a gut instinct — now we can be concerned.”
DEATH AND ‘AUTONOMOUS ZONE’ GRIP GEORGE FLOYD SQUARE AHEAD OF CHAUVIN TRIAL
The prosecution then proceeded to play the audio of Scurry reporting her concerns to a sergeant in the Minneapolis Police Department.
“I don’t know, you can call me a snitch if you want to, but we have the cameras up for [squad] 320’s call, and … I don’t know if they had to use force or not, but they got something out of the back of the squad, and all of them sat on this man. So I don’t know if they needed you or not, but they haven’t said anything to me yet,” Scurry could be heard saying in a recording presented to the court.
When cross-examined by Chauvin’s defense attorney, Eric Nelson, Scurry said she acknowledged that she is not a trained police officer and was unfamiliar with use of force directives. She also told the court that she was unsure about what the nature of the arrest was.
Scurry’s testimony marked the second dramatic point during the first day of Chauvin’s murder trial. At the start of the proceedings, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell told the court that Chauvin “betrayed” his badge in his treatment of Floyd before showing the full video of the arrest.
DEREK CHAUVIN ‘BETRAYED’ HIS BADGE, PROSECUTORS SAY AT START OF MURDER TRIAL
“You will learn that on May 25, 2020, Mr. Derek Chauvin betrayed this badge when he used excessive and unreasonable force upon the body of Mr. George Floyd,” Blackwell said. “That he put his knee upon his neck and his back, grinding and crushing him until the very breath, no, ladies and gentlemen, until the very life was squeezed out of him.”
Nelson countered by citing a coroner’s report showing high levels of narcotics in Floyd’s system, including fentanyl and methamphetamine.
“This will ultimately be another significant battle in this trial: What was Mr. Floyd’s actual cause of death?” Nelson said. “The evidence will show that Mr. Floyd died of cardiac arrhythmia that occurred as a result of hypertension, coronary disease, the ingestion of methamphetamine and fentanyl, and the adrenaline flowing through his body, all of which acted to further compromise an already compromised heart.”
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Proceedings ended late Monday afternoon and are due to continue again on Tuesday at 10:30 a.m.
