'That could have been me': The people Derek Chauvin choked before George Floyd
They describe an officer quick to use force and callous about their pain.
February 5, 2021 7:39 p.m.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/02/05/that-could-have-been-me-the-people-derek-chauvin-choked-before-george-floyd
Nearly three years before the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd as he cried that he couldn’t breathe last May, Zoya Code found herself in a similar position: handcuffed facedown on the ground, with Chauvin’s knee on her.
The officer had answered a call of a domestic dispute at her home, and Code said he forced her down when she tried to pull away.
“He just stayed on my neck,” Code said, ignoring her desperate pleas to get off. Frustrated and upset, she challenged him to press harder. “Then he did. Just to shut me up,” she said.
Last week, a judge in Minnesota ruled that prosecutors could present the details of her 2017 arrest in their case against the former officer, who was charged with second-degree unintentional murder in Floyd’s death.
Code’s case was one of six arrests as far back as 2015 that the Minnesota attorney general’s office sought to introduce, arguing that they showed how Chauvin was using excessive force when he restrained people by their necks or by kneeling on top of them — just as he did in arresting Floyd. Police records show that Chauvin was never formally reprimanded for any of these incidents, even though at least two of those arrested said they had filed formal complaints.
Code’s mother had accused her of trying to choke her with an extension cord, according to the arrest report. Code said in an interview that her mother was swinging the cord around, and that she merely grabbed hold of it.
She said she had left the house to cool off after the fight and when she returned, Chauvin and his partner had arrived. In the prosecutors’ description of the arrest, based on Chauvin’s report and body-camera video, Chauvin told Code she was under arrest and grabbed her arm. When she pulled away, he pulled her to the ground face first and knelt on her. The two officers then picked her up and carried her outside the house, face down.
There, prosecutors said, Chauvin knelt on the back of the handcuffed woman “even though she was offering no physical resistance at all.”
Code, in an interview, said she began pleading: “Don’t kill me.”
At that point, according to the prosecutors’ account, Chauvin told his partner to restrain Code’s ankles as well, though she “was not being physically aggressive.” As he tied her, she said, she told the other officer, “You’re learning from an animal. That man — that’s evilness right there.”
Chauvin’s partner in that arrest declined to comment. Misdemeanor domestic assault and disorderly conduct charges filed against Code were ultimately dropped.
Under the judge’s order, only Code’s arrest, among the six cases showing what may have been excessive force, can be used at Chauvin’s trial. Prosecutors also sought to include two additional cases they said showed just the opposite — that Chauvin knew how to use reasonable force to properly restrain a person.
The judge’s order will allow them to use one of those cases: an incident in which the police department commended Chauvin and other officers for taking lifesaving steps in placing a restrained, suicidal man on his side so he could breathe. Chauvin even rode with the man to the hospital, according to prosecutors.
According to the attorney general’s office, the arrest showed that Chauvin knew how important it was to avoid breathing problems in detainees. When he did not put Floyd in a similar side position, prosecutors contend, he understood that it could jeopardize his life.
Chauvin’s lawyer objected to any of the previous arrests being admitted at his trial, which is set to begin in March. He argued that Chauvin’s actions “were not crimes,” but rather part of Chauvin’s job as an officer, and that a police supervisor at each arrest scene reviewed his use of force and concluded that it comported with department standards.
Full article at link above…just showing portions of what they are going to allow.