MURDERING COP DEREK CHAUVINHAD LONG HISTORY OF VIOLENCE AND 20 COMPLAINTS - BUT ISN'T THAT TYPICAL OF AMERICA'S NAZIS THUG COPS?

Cop who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis had record of brutality

29 May 2020

Derek Chauvin, the 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department who killed George Floyd, had a long record of abuse, including three shooting incidents, about 20 complaints and two letters of reprimand.

Local station KARE 11 reports 13 complaints since 2003 were closed without discipline. Chauvin was awarded a departmental medal of valor in 2009.

The police murder in Minneapolis is part of an unending string of outrages that occur on a daily basis. Had a bystander not recorded Floyd’s assault and murder and shared the video, the actual circumstances of his death may not have ever come to light.

Derek Chauvin

Tou Thao, another police officer involved in the killing, has also been subject to excessive force complaints. Thao was the defendant in a lawsuit that alleged he beat a handcuffed citizen, and the city of Minneapolis paid out $25,000 to his victim.

After video of the murder was widely circulated, a victim of Chauvin in a 2008 incident came forward. Ira Toles, a 33-year old IT worker, told the Daily Beast that Chauvin was one of several officers who entered his home unannounced after the mother of his child called police to report that Toles assaulted her. He said that Chauvin broke into his bathroom and beat him before shooting him in the groin at point-blank range: “I collapsed in the main entrance where I was left to bleed until the paramedics came… He tried to kill me in that bathroom.”

In 2011, Chauvin was among a group of officers involved in the non-fatal shooting of Alaskan native Leroy Martinez. A witness to the police shooting, Delora Iceman, told the Star Tribune that Martinez had thrown down his gun and put his hands in the air when the officer, Terry Nutter, shot him in the abdomen after warning he would do so. Minneapolis found the shooting to be proper.

In October 2006, Chauvin was one of six cops who opened fire on 42-year-old Wayne Reyes, suspected of a stabbing, after Reyes’ reportedly pointed a shotgun at them. Reyes was shot multiple times and killed. A grand jury ruled use of force was justified, and the killing was not prosecuted by Hennepin county attorney Amy Klobuchar, the future Democratic Party presidential candidate.

Chauvin has retained Tom Kelly, the attorney 

who represented Jeronimo Yanez. Yanez, a 

St. Anthony, Minnesota police officer, was 

acquitted in the 2016 police murder of 

Philando Castile, whom he shot five times at 

close range while Castile sat in the passenger

seat during a traffic stop.

Trump threatens to mobilize the military to shoot protesters

Mass anger erupts throughout the US in protests against police murder of George Floyd

29 May 2020

Protests and demonstrations have erupted throughout the US in an explosive reaction to the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In Minneapolis, thousands gathered on the same block where Floyd was killed and marched to the Minneapolis Third Police Precinct building. Multiple fires were burning Thursday, including at the Third Police Precinct, which remains on fire at the time of writing. The Minnesota National Guard announced late last night that 500 soldiers had been activated and were preparing to deploy.

Also late Thursday night, US President Donald Trump threatened to deploy the military against the demonstrators and shoot protesters. “I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American city, Minneapolis,” Trump tweeted. “Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right.”

Police move through an area during demonstrations Thursday, May 28, 2020, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Trump called the protesters “THUGS” and said that he “just spoke to [Minnesota] Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Demonstrations were also held in New York City, where 33 protestors were arrested after a scrum with police. Hundreds of people also participated in demonstrations in Columbus, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Pensacola, Florida; Louisville, Kentucky; and Los Angeles, California. In Columbus, protesters attempted to break into the Ohio statehouse.

Several hundred gathered in downtown Louisville and marched through the streets to demand the arrest of the cops who killed Breonna Taylor in March. In Denver, Colorado, a protestor was hit by a car that forced its way through the crowd.

Floyd was murdered Monday after being 

seized by four Minneapolis cops who were 

responding to an alleged “forgery in 

progress.” As of Thursday, none of the cops 

involved in the murder had been arrested or 

charged.

Floyd repeatedly cried out for help, screaming “I can’t breathe” and “I’m gonna die,” as Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck and Tou Thao helped keep the crowd from interfering.

At a Thursday afternoon press conference, Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey attempted to placate protesters and pleaded with them to “be better than we have been.” Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arrodondo joined in the plea to restore order in the city. “I know that there is currently a deficit of hope in our city… But I will not allow anyone to continue to increase that deficit by re-traumatizing those folks in our community,” he said.

Popular anger was further stoked Thursday by the comments of the prosecutor who has jurisdiction over the case, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman. He told reporters that there is “other evidence that does not support a criminal charge… I will not rush to justice.”

Freeman is responsible for the decision to not bring charges against the officer who killed Jamar Clark in 2016, sparking days of protest, as well as the more than half-a-year delay in deciding to charge and arrest the officer who shot and killed Justine Damond in 2017.

The eruption of anger is not only over the killing of George Floyd. This is only the latest in an unending string of killing and brutalization. Every year, the police in the US kill 1,000 people in cities and states throughout the country, whether run by Democrats or Republicans.

To the outrage over police violence is added the explosive situation created by the response of the ruling class to the coronavirus pandemic. Trillions have been handed out to the rich, while tens of millions of workers are out of work and will not have a job to return to.

The Trump administration is seeking to utilize mass social distress to force a return to work that will lead to a sharp spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Already, more than 100,000 people have died from the coronavirus.

From the representatives of the ruling elite, 

there have been the usual hypocritical 

statements that follow every horrific police 

killing. Democratic presidential candidate Joe

Biden, who was vice president under Barack 

Obama, declared that the killing of Floyd is 

“part of an ingrained systemic cycle of 

injustice that still exists in this country.” The 

Obama Justice Department repeatedly 

whitewashed police killings, refusing to bring 

federal charges against killer cops.

This is combined with the efforts of Democratic Party figures like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to frame police violence as a product of racial conflict, as they did in speeches at the Minneapolis protest on Thursday.

There is no doubt that racism was involved the killing of Floyd and other incidents of horrific police violence. The most backward and fascistic layers are deliberately recruited into the police. The Trump administration in particular has encouraged unrestrained police violence with impunity.

However, the police are fundamentally an instrument of class rule. As social tensions reach a breaking point in the United States, the ruling class is turning ever more directly to the mobilization of its apparatus of repression.

Klobuchar Previously Declined to Prosecute Officer Involved in George Floyd’s Death

AP Photo/Steven Senne

HARIS ALIC

28 May 202037

4:22

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), as a Minnesota county prosecutor in the early 2000s, refused to prosecute the police officer now at the center of the controversy surrounding the death of George Floyd.

Klobuchar, who served as the chief legal officer of Hennepin County, Minnesota, before ascending to the United States Senate, declined to charge Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for his role in the shooting death of Wayne Reyes in October 2006.

Reyes allegedly “stabbed his girlfriend and a male friend,” before fleeing in his vehicle and setting off a chase by law enforcement, according to a report on police brutality from the Minneapolis-based Communities United Against Police Brutality.

Chauvin, who at the time had been on the Minneapolis police force since 1999, was one of six officers involved in the pursuit. When Reyes was eventually stopped, Chauvin and the other officers claimed he aimed a shotgun towards them in a threatening manner. Reyes’s alleged burnishing of the weapon resulted in all six officers opening fire and killing him.

The incident, which was reported by The Guardian on Thursday, elicited widespread concern among Minneapolis residents at the time of Reyes’s death for what was seen as too strong a use of force. As such, Klobuchar, who was running for the U.S. Senate at the time of the shooting, was pressured by the local black community in Minneapolis to prosecute the officers involved.

In the weeks following the shooting, however, Klobuchar declined to act on the matter. Instead, having won her Senate race, she spent the remaining three months of her tenure between November 2006 and January 2007 planning for her transition to Washington, DC. The case eventually went to a grand jury in 2008, which opted not to charge the officers with any wrongdoing for their conduct.

Chauvin would continue to serve on the Minneapolis police force for the next decade and a half. It would not, though, be his last brush with controversy. In 2011, Chauvin would be placed on temporary leave after he and four other officers shot a Native American man, who was later charged with felony second-degree assault. Overall, Chauvin would face at least ten civilian complaints throughout his tenure with the force. Three of those, which arose because of his use of “derogatory language” and “demeaning tone” towards suspects, would result in oral reprimands.

His career officially came to an end earlier this week when he was fired for his involvement in Floyd’s death. The firing came after a video went viral showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck while attempting to arrest the man for alleged forgery. In the video, Floyd is heard pleading for help, claiming he cannot breathe, as Chauvin stands over him. Tou Thao, Chauvin’s partner who also has a record of police brutality complaints, is seen in the video refusing to intervene.

Since the video went viral, protests have arisen across Minnesota and other parts of the country from activists hoping to shine a light on what they see as the failures and inequities of the criminal justice system. Although most of the protests have been non-violent, several riots broke out in Minneapolis and neighboring Saint Paul on Wednesday and Thursday.

The attention drawn by both the protests and the riots has brought Klobuchar’s 2006 decision to not prosecute Chauvin back into the spotlight. Such scrutiny, however, comes at an inopportune moment for the senator, who leads the short-list to be former Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate this November.

Even though Klobuchar was always going to face criticism for the law and order image she cultivated as a county prosecutor, the current situation in Minnesota disqualifies her in the eyes of many black Democrats and activists. The sentiment was perhaps best summed up by Sunny Hostin during an episode of ABC’s The View on Wednesday.

“We’re seeing that black people in Minneapolis are arrested at nine times the rate of a white person for nonviolent offenses,” Hostin said. She added “that this is why the black community has said that Amy Klobuchar is a nonstarter for them, because … she declined to prosecute over two dozen cases involving police killings of unarmed people.”