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
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
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.
Police records showed that 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.
This is a developing story.