Federal and state authorities will investigate a Minneapolis police officer after footage emerged appearing to show him killing an unarmed black man on Monday.
The gruesome video, filmed in Minneapolis, shows a white officer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for at least seven minutes. Floyd, 40, tells the officer, identified by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as Derek Chauvin, that he can’t breathe and that he is about to die. The officer remains on Floyd’s neck even as bystanders shout that Floyd appears to have gone unconscious. Floyd died in a nearby hospital shortly after the incident, police said in a Tuesday morning statement.
Minneapolis police characterized Floyd’s death as a “medical incident,” but the FBI and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension are investigating the officer for possible civil-rights violations.
Minneapolis police claimed the incident began when the department received a report about a “forgery in progress” on Monday night. Officers said they identified Floyd as the suspect and asked him to step out of his car. He complied but resisted officers, police claim.
Still, “officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress,” the police statement reads. “Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later."
Footage, filmed by a bystander, gives a more detailed picture of what happened between the handcuffing and the hospitalization. “Please, please, please I can’t breathe, please man,” Floyd tells Chauvin, who is kneeling on his neck in the footage.
Later in the clip, Floyd tells Chauvin that “I’m about to die.” Chauvin tells him to relax. “I can’t breathe,” Floyd says. “Please, the knee in my neck, I can’t breathe sir.”
The video does not show the beginning of the arrest. “When I walked up, he was already on the ground,” Darnella Frazier, a bystander who filmed the incident said in a Facebook video. “The cops, their knees—they was pinning him down by his neck and he was crying and shit, saying he couldn’t breathe. They wasn’t trying to take him serious.”
Floyd’s death has drawn comparisons to that of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who was killed by a New York City police officer who suffocated him in a banned chokehold in 2014. Garner repeatedly told his arresting officers that he could not breathe.
Minnesota officials have condemned Floyd’s death, calling for an investigation of the officers involved.
“Being black in America should not be a death sentence,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a Tuesday press conference. “For five minutes, we watched a white officer press his knee into a black man’s neck. Five minutes. When you hear someone calling for help, you’re supposed to help. This officer failed in the most basic, human sense. What happened on Chicago and 38th last night is awful. It was traumatic. It serves as a reminder of how far we have to go.”
Though police claim Floyd died at the hospital, Frazier said he died on the ground. “The police killed him, bro, right in front of everybody,” she said, adding that “five, six minutes” after announcing he couldn’t breathe, Floyd was “sitting there dead.”