George Floyd: Bodycam footage reveal cops were more concerned about their wellbeing than taking him to hospital
The body-cam footage of the moment George Floyd died while being arrested by four cops on May 25 was made public on Wednesday, July 15. As he struggled with the disgraced Minneapolis officers before being pinned to the ground, the African-American man said, “I’m not a bad guy."
Despite the transcript of the footage being released earlier, Judge Peter Cahill, without giving an explanation, has prohibited the publication of the video. As a result, the fullest public visual record yet of Floyd’s interaction with the cops, who were later charged with his death, was made available for the first time to a select group of journalists and members of the public, by appointment only.
The footage in question was comprised of the bodycam recordings from officers Thomas Lane and J. Kueng and was considered evidence in the criminal cases against them and the other two officers. Lane, Kueng, and another officer, Tou Thao, are charged with aiding and abetting. The fourth officer, Derek Chauvin, who held his knee against Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes, is charged with second-degree murder. All the four were fired the day after Floyd's death.
According to the Associated Press, which was one of the media outlets that viewed the video, a distraught Floyd was seen stepping out of his vehicle at the request of the cops near a south Minneapolis corner grocery, where the victim was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill. When Floyd did not immediately put his hands up, Lane pulled his gun on him. Floyd reacted by saying that he had been shot before. The officers handcuffed Floyd regardless, and as they were about to put him at the back of the squad car, he started complaining that he was claustrophobic.
As the four cops tried to wrestle Floyd into their squad car, he was seen telling them, “I’m not that kind of guy. I just had COVID, man, I don’t want to go back to that.” An onlooker at the scene who witnessed Floyd's struggle, told him, "You can't win,'' to which he replied, “I don’t want to win!” Eventually, in all the struggle, Floyd loses his shoe and Chauvin loses the camera that was mounted on his chest, which lands underneath the squad car.
A few minutes later, Floyd lays facedown on the street, with Chauvin and Kueng each holding a part of Floyd’s handcuffed hands to hold them in position. Lane remained at Floyd's feet as Kueng’s knee appeared to press on Floyd’s bottom or just below. As the minutes ticked by, Floyd's voice fade, with him occasionally saying, “I can’t breathe," before going still.
Instead of being worried about how Floyd was doing, the officers started assuring their own physical wellbeings. “I think he’s passing out,” one officer says. “You guys all right, though?” someone asks. “Yeah — good so far,” one of them replies. Another one, which could have been Lane, replies, “My knee might be a little scratched, but I’ll survive.” Kueng even frees a pebble from underneath the police SUV and tosses it acorss the street.
As bystanders around the area screamed and shouted, expressing fear for Floyd’s condition, Lane casually asked Chauvin whether they should roll Floyd on his side, suggesting that he might be in delirium. A few minutes passed and Lane sounded a bit more concerned when asking about rolling Floyd on his side again. Kueng checked for a pulse and said that he cannot find one. Eventually Lane started performing constant chest compressions by hand with no visible results.
At the end, an ambulance was seen parked a few blocks away from the store for several minutes while Lane and the EMTs tried to revive Floyd. Despite Floyd being in full cardiac arrest, he was not taken straight to the hospital.