Minneapolis police chief set to testify against Chauvin in trial over death of George Floyd

Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo is due to testify today in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin for the deadly arrest of George Floyd, where prosecutors say he will undermine the defense claim the former officer followed police training.

"This was murder — it wasn't a lack of training," Arradondo said last year in a statement on the video footage of Chauvin, who is white, kneeling on the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old handcuffed black man, for more than nine minutes.

Arradondo, who in 2017 became the first black person to lead the city's police force, fired Chauvin and three other officers who were involved the day after Floyd's death, which led to global protests against police brutality.

Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter charges, arguing that he did only what he was trained to do in his 19 years as a police officer, a defense that Arrodondo is expected to dispute. Parties to the case said in court on Monday that Arrodondo would testify later in the day.

Earlier, prosecutors from the Minnesota attorney general's office called to the stand the emergency room doctor who declared Floyd dead. Chauvin's lawyers have said he followed his training and that Floyd died because of a drug overdose.

Here are some important moments from the sixth day of testimony in Chauvin's trial:

Two paramedics who brought Floyd to the Hennepin County Medical Center after his arrest on May 25, 2020, told Dr. Bradford Langenfeld they had been trying to restart Floyd's heart for about 30 minutes without success.

Langenfeld, an emergency physician, told the jury he took over Floyd's care. Asked by prosecutor Jerry Blackwell if the paramedics indicated that they suspected a drug overdose or heart attack, Langenfeld said they did not, indicating that only that Floyd's heart had stopped beating and that there may have been a delay in starting resuscitation efforts.

"It's well known that any amount of time that a patient spends in cardiac arrest without immediate CPR markedly decreases the chance of a good outcome," he told the jury. Medical tests led Langenfeld to think it was unlikely that Floyd suffered a heart attack, he told the jury. The most likely explanation, the doctor said, was asphyxia.

Videos of Floyd's arrest show that Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd's neck for more than three minutes after Floyd appeared to have stopped breathing, and none of the police officers at the scene attempted to give Floyd first-aid care, which prosecutors say is contrary to police training.

Floyd was declared dead at 9:25 pm, about 30 minutes after he arrived at the hospital and less than 90 minutes after police arrived outside the Cup Foods grocery store to arrest Floyd on suspicion of his using a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes.

Reuters