The trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd, begins this week, so it’s the perfect time for a reminder that what the media initially told us about Floyd’s death was, naturally, not what actually happened.
The only thing the media wanted you to know about the incident last May is that an unarmed black man named George Floyd died under the crushing and sustained weight of the knee of a white man, Officer Chauvin.
For days, CNN and MSNBC ran little more than a 30-second clip that showed Chauvin kneeling on top of Floyd, who was being pressed to the ground by an additional two officers. That, and nothing else, was what you needed to know. And that narrative sparked hundreds of wildly destructive protests, widespread looting, and violence.
It wasn’t until raw police transcripts, body camera video, and witness testimony became public that we found out that this was more complicated than just the story of an innocent black man who died under the knee of a racist officer.
Police body camera footage showed the beginning of Floyd’s encounter with police, starting when Officer Thomas Lane approached the parked vehicle in which Floyd was sitting. Lane taps on Floyd’s window, and Floyd, alarmed, shuffles around before opening the door.
From the beginning, it’s clear that Floyd is in some kind of mental or emotional distress. This leads to his frantically telling Lane, who is pointing a gun at him, and the other officer present, Alexander Kueng, that he’s “sorry” and that he “didn’t do nothing” while repeatedly failing to do as instructed.
Floyd was told to keep his hands on the steering wheel, which he wouldn’t immediately do. When asked to step out of the car, Floyd pleaded for the officer not to shoot him, even as Lane told him, multiple times, “I’m not going to shoot you.” (Lane is heard later in the video stating that he was concerned about Floyd’s hands because he thought he might restart the car and attempt to drive away.)
Throughout Floyd’s entire interaction with the officers, he struggled, perhaps in part because he had a genuine fear of the police. He’s seen begging not to be shot. He’s heard telling them, “I’m not that kind of guy” and that he “just lost [his] mom.” And he repeats over and over that he’s claustrophobic, that he can’t breathe, and that he feels like he’s going to die.
All of that, however, was already taking place before Floyd was forced to the ground. He only ended up on the ground after police were unable to get the 6-foot-4-inch, 223-pound man to sit inside the squad car. Floyd actually asked to be placed lying on the ground instead of in the car.
Floyd’s behavior was unquestionably strange. Lane had asked the woman who was with Floyd, “Why’s he getting all squirrelly and not showing us his hands and just being all weird like that?” Before that, the person who called 911 about Floyd allegedly using counterfeit money to buy cigarettes described Floyd on the call as “awfully drunk” and “not in control of himself.” Based on the video, he does not seem to have been exaggerating.
Officers also asked Floyd more than once if he was high on anything, to which he said no. But the medical examiner’s report showed he did, in fact, have both methamphetamine and fentanyl in his blood.
In one conversation between officers Lane and Kueng, Lane says, “He was acting real shady, like something’s in [the car].” Thao asks, “Is he high on something?”
Lane replies, “I’m assuming so.”
Kueng then says, “I believe so. We found a pipe.”
There isn’t anything on the video to indicate that Floyd was targeted for being black or that the officers believed the actions they took weren’t necessary. They had been called to the scene to deal with someone who was in a highly erratic and agitated state, possibly due to drugs, and who was apparently incapable of cooperating with police demands.
Floyd certainly appears throughout the video to be scared and in physical distress. The medical report said he had “severe” heart disease and a history of hypertension, the effects of which would be compounded by any form of stress, no less a confrontation with police who would eventually have him on the ground under their knees.
But the medical examiner found no injuries to Floyd’s neck and noted nothing remarkable about his esophagus or trachea, undermining the suggestion that his death was a direct result of the position he was in under Chauvin’s knee.
Contemporaneous accounts by witnesses of Floyd’s run-in with the police also paint a very different picture from what the media had been saying.
The convenience store owner who made the initial call to police about Floyd told Kueng, “We went outside to talk to them. They were just really high off stuff, and they said get out of my face or something, and that’s when we called you guys.”
During the portion of Floyd’s arrest when multiple officers attempted to seat him in a police car, a witness is heard saying to Floyd, “You can’t win, bro. You can’t win. Go on in.”
That same man told Kueng later, “I tried. I told him he can’t win. ‘Go on, get in the car,’ I kept telling him. ‘You can’t win, bro, get in the car.’ I said, ‘I know you can’t win.’”
The state prosecutor does not dispute that Floyd resisted arrest at multiple points during the entire incident. The complaint against Chavuin concedes that Floyd resisted when he was first approached, that he “stiffened up, fell to the ground” when he was walked to the police car, and that he “did not voluntarily get in the car and struggled with the officers by intentionally falling down.”
Does all of this comport with the accusation that Chauvin murdered Floyd? A jury will decide. But at least it will get the information that the media didn’t think was important enough for the public to know.
