Derek Chauvin 'choked and knelt on SIX other people during arrests'

February 2, 2021

Prosecutors claim George Floyd cop Derek Chauvin choked and knelt on SIX other people during arrests dating back to 2015

Former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin is facing second-degree manslaughter charges over the death of George Floyd
Floyd died after Chauvin pressed his knee into the black man’s neck for eight minutes during an arrest last May
Prosecutors are now seeking to present details at his trial from six other arrests of people who Chauvin allegedly restrained with similar excessive force
Three of those people shared their accounts with The Marshall Project in an article published Tuesday

Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis cop accused of killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck during an arrest last spring, allegedly used similarly dangerous and suffocating force in confrontations with at least six other people years earlier.

Chauvin is facing charges of unintentional second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter after he pressed his knee into the neck of Floyd, a black man, for eight minutes during an arrest on May 25.

Prosecutors are now seeking to present details at his trial from six other arrests of people who Chauvin allegedly restrained with similar excessive force – holding them by their necks or kneeling on top of them.

Three of those people, along with a fourth person who witnessed one of the arrests, shared their accounts with The Marshall Project in an article published Tuesday.

One of them was Zoya Code, whose experience with Chauvin in 2017 bears a disturbing resemblance to what happened with Floyd three years later.

Like Floyd, Code said she was handcuffed and pinned to the ground by Chauvin’s knee when he arrested her.

‘He just stayed on my neck,’ she said. When he ignored her pleas for him to get off, Code said she got frustrated and challenged him to push harder. ‘He did. Just to shut me up,’ she said.

Derek Chauvin (left), the white Minneapolis cop accused of killing George Floyd (right) by kneeling on his neck during an arrest last spring, allegedly used similarly dangerous and suffocating force in confrontations with at least six other people

Last week a judge agreed to allow attorneys prosecuting Chauvin to introduce Code’s case as evidence of the officer’s pattern of using excessive force.

Chauvin’s attorneys have insisted that he used appropriate force in the encounter with Floyd, who had been accused of using a counterfeit bill at a convenience store.

Police records showed that Chauvin had been the subject of at least 22 complaints over the course of the course of his 19 years with the Minneapolis Police Department, from which he was fired after Floyd’s death.

Only one of those complaints resulted in disciplinary action.

Chauvin was never reprimanded for any of the six prior incidents brought forward by the prosecution, despite two of the people filing formal complaints.

Four of the incidents involved people of color – two black, one Latino and one Native American – while the race of the other two people was not specified.

All three of the people who spoke to The Marshall Project, which coordinated its article with the New York Times, had a history of brushes with law enforcement, but most stemmed from traffic violations and nonviolent offenses.

Code’s arrest took place on June 25, 2017, after her mother accused her of trying to choke her with an extension cord, according to a police report. Code denied the allegation, saying she merely grabbed the cord that her mother was swinging around during a fight at their home.

Code briefly left the house and returned to find Chauvin and another officer who had responded to the mother’s call.

In a court filing prosecutors wrote that Chauvin grabbed Code by the arm and told her she was under arrest.

When Code pulled away, Chauvin pushed her to the ground and knelt on top of her before carrying her out of the house, according to prosecutors and body-camera footage.

Once outside, Code was again pinned on the ground in handcuffs as Chauvin dug his knee into her back – ‘even though she was offering no physical resistance at all,’ prosecutors wrote.

In an interview Code recalled pleading: ‘Don’t kill me.’

Chauvin responded by telling his partner to restrain Code’s ankles, even though she was still ‘not being physically aggressive’, prosecutors wrote.

The partner complied, and Code remembered telling him: ‘You’re learning from an animal. That man’ – Chauvin – ‘that’s evilness right there.’

In a court filing responding to prosecutor’s account of Code’s arrest, Chauvin’s lawyer said he acted properly while responding to ‘a violent crime in a volatile situation’.

Code was initially charged with misdemeanor domestic assault and disorderly conduct, but those charges were ultimately dropped.

This is a developing story.

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