George Floyd’s family, the African American killed by the police on May 25, filed a federal lawsuit for wrongful – that is, involuntary – murder on Wednesday against Minneapolis and the four police officers accused of his death. Relatives allege that the former agents violated Floyd’s constitutional rights and the city allowed a culture of excessive use of force and racism in its police force, which allowed the tragic event to occur. New recordings were also revealed this afternoon, which shows that The last sentence before the 46-year-old man passed away was: “I can’t breathe.”
Ben Crump, a lawyer for the Floyd family, explained at a press conference that the lawsuit seeks compensation that makes it “financially prohibitive for the police to unfairly kill marginalized people, especially black people, in the future.” In addition, he clarified that it was not only White Agent Derek Chauvin’s knee, but it was “the knee of the entire Minneapolis Police Department in George Floyd’s neck that killed him.”
Hours before he filed the lawsuit, the Hennepin County District Court released two half-hour videos each, recorded by cameras embedded in the uniforms of police officers Thomas Lane and Alexander Kueng. Scared, anxious and begging not to be shot reveal the images. When he was already immobilized, Floyd complained at least 25 times that he was unable to breathe and told police that he had been diagnosed with covid-19. “It takes a lot of oxygen to say that,” police officer Chauvin replied without removing his knee from the detainee’s neck for almost nine and a half minutes – and not eight minutes and 46 seconds, as previously stated – when he was begging for his lifetime.
The two videos are part of the evidence provided by exagent Lane, 37, accused of inciting and aiding a second-degree murder. With the role he had during the event, he seeks to dismiss the charges against him. The transcripts show that Lane asked Chauvin several times if they shouldn’t change Floyd’s position when he was detained on the floor. Lane insisted on his concern that the detainee died suddenly and made him see the police officer with 20 years of experience, and charged with manslaughter, that Floyd appeared to have passed out.
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