Minneapolis police chief says Chauvin violated policy

Derek Chauvin violated Minneapolis Police Department rules and its ethics code on respecting the "sanctity of life" during the deadly arrest of George Floyd last May, the city's police chief testified at the former officer's murder trial on Monday.

This report produced by Freddie Joyner.

Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo took the stand Monday in the Derek Chauvin trial and testified that the former officer broke police department rules and its ethics code governing the "sanctity of life" in his deadly arrest of George Floyd last May.

PROSECUTOR: "Is what you see in exhibit seventeen, in your opinion, within the Minneapolis police department policy five dash three hundred authorizing the use of reasonable force?" ARRADONDO: "It is not." PROSECUTOR: "And why not?" ARRADONDO: "It has to be objectively reasonable.

We have to take into account the circumstances, information, the threat to the officer, the threat to others, and the severity of that.

So that is not part of our policy.

That is not what we teach." Prosecutors have called Arradondo and other officers to weaken Chauvin's defense that he did only what he was trained to do in his 19 years as a cop.

Chauvin's defense team on Monday countered that sometimes use of force was necessary to de-escalate a situation, suggesting that Chauvin's detractors had the benefit of hindsight and distance that Chauvin didn’t have in the moment.

NELSON: “When's the last time that you've actually, and I don't mean to be dismissive, but actually arrested a suspect." ARRADONDO: "It's been many years, sir." Videos of Floyd's arrest show that Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd's neck for more than three minutes after Floyd appeared to have stopped breathing, and none of the police officers at the scene attempted to give Floyd first-aid care.

Dr. Bradford Langenfeld, the emergency doctor who took over Floyd’s care undercut the defense's argument that Floyd's death could have been a drug overdose or a heart attack.

BLACKWELL: “Did you consider the possibility of toxins, for example, being responsible for Mr. Floyds cardiac arrest, including potentially drugs?" LAGENFIELD: “In the sense that it might have informed our care?

Yes.

There was again, no report that this patient had, for example, overdosed on a specific medication." Medical tests led Langenfeld to think it was unlikely that Floyd suffered a heart attack, he told the jury.

The most likely explanation, the doctor said, was asphyxia.

Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter charges.