As of time reported, no arrests have been made in the case of the death of George Floyd – an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis who died after a local police officer handcuffed him then pinned his knee onto the man’s neck (restricting his ability to breath).
Although officers were quickly terminated from the precinct (as we reported here), protests erupted in the ‘Twin City’ as the County Attorney Mike Freeman has not officially announced intent to arrest or charge them.
That very fact led the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, to hold a press conference and pressure Freeman to detain the four.
“If you had done it, or if I had done it, we would be behind bars right now,” Frey said. “We watched for five whole excruciating minutes as a white officer firmly pressed his knee into the neck of an unarmed, handcuffed black man. I saw no threat. I saw nothing that would signal that this kind of force was necessary. By the way, that particular technique that was used is not authorized by the MPD. … And it should not be used, period.”
Frey continued by stating:
“We are not talking about a split-second decision that was made incorrectly. There’s somewhere around 300 seconds in those five minutes, every one of which the officer could have turned back, every second of which he could have removed his knee from George Floyd’s neck, every one of which he could have listened to the community around him, clearly saying he needed to stop, every one of which you heard George Floyd himself articulating the pain he was feeling, an inability to breathe,” Frey said.