Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo described today in court how he found out about the May 25, 2020 incident involving George Floyd and four of his officers.
Arradondo said he was at home around 9 p.m. local time when he received a call from a deputy chief that Minneapolis officers “had responded to 38th and Chicago. And while attempting to take someone into custody, that which I learned now to be Mr. Floyd, they believed he would not make it or survive.”
The chief then decided to call Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which conducts the police department’s critical incidents.
“I deemed that this would be a critical incident and it has been our protocol to alert them, and they would conduct that investigation. So, I made that call to the BCA to have them start to conduct this critical incident,” Arradondo said.
He went on to call Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to brief him on the incident and then headed to City Hall.
While Arradondo was at City Hall, he reviewed video from a city-owned camera after he learned that Floyd had died. The video, he said, had no audio, it was from a distance and only showed the backside of the officers.
At some point, he said he later learned from a community member of a bystander video that showed something different.
“Probably close to midnight a community member had contacted me and said, chief, almost verbatim, but said, chief, have you seen the video of your officer choking and killing that man at 38th and Chicago? And so once I heard that statement, I just knew it wasn’t the same milestone camera video that I had saw. And eventually within minutes after that, I saw for the first time what is now known as the bystander video,” Arradondo said.
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