Most senior Officer in Minnedishu PD says that it is lethal force to put your knee on someone's neck. They have never been trained to do this with someone handcuffed behind their back while in the prone position.
He further states that simply being handcuffed with your hands behind your back makes it hard to breathe, and being in the prone position would make it even harder to breathe. For this reason once someone is handcuffed with their hands behind their back you get their chest off the ground. (GF's chest was on the ground the whole time) He said you usually get them on their side or sitting.
This came before the break at 10:45 local time, probably after 10:15.
He further states that of the 5 levels of force, once you have someone handcuffed behind their back you immediately drop to the lowest level of force and threat, the perp can't really hurt you, while they can still kick you can get out of the way.
Cross-examination should be interesting!
He also establishes that the Officer who handcuffs a perp immediately becomes responsible for their well being. I point out that if Chauvin didn't handcuff GF, this adds a wrinkle to the case.
Good thing the knee was on dude's back then.
Everybody else sees Chauvin's left knee across GF's shoulder and on the base of GF's neck. If you see it anywhere else during the 9:29 in question, I'd love to see what you're looking at with a link and a timestamp.
From the trial: https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1377380718406291457
That shows nothing different.
Chauvin's left knee was across GF's shoulder and the base of his neck, which also pressed his face against the pavement. That basic position never changed. The placement of his right knee does seem to change, and nobody seems to be paying attention to that knee which is a mistake.
What many are willing to assume is that they know how much weight is on any area at any given time. We don't. You can shift your weight around between your toes, knees, etc. with nothing really detectable to anyone else. Chauvin's testimony about this might not carry much weight, for a lot of reasons; including over a 9 minute period you can't really tell how much force is on your toes vs your knee because you tire.
There are times you can tell Chauvin wasn't deliberately propping himself up on his feet, but allowing his weight to be on his knees. Yet he's only 140# so how much effect that has is unknown. It's possible that his right knee in the middle of the back caused more problem, and when it was lower it might cause more pain but contribute less to death. It'll be interesting to see if they even try to go into these things.
Dunno, it's the defense argument. Of course its biased towards that. People made it seem like chauvin crushed floyd's wind pipe and that's not the case. Yea, you can still make it harder to breathe by riding someone's lungs.
Problem is I've never seen this angle until the trial and it makes one think it was more opioid than chauvin.. like 80% OD and 20% restricting breathing.
No way he is getting murder 1. The slow roll medic response and exactly when they were called has potential to get dude a manslaughter or negligent homicide charge, I can see that sticking.
Not the biggest cop fan but from my interactions they are more interested in getting you into the system to farm you for money than hurting you and causing trouble for themselves.