Trial News

A §1983 civil rights lawsuit has been filed against four police officers and the city of Minneapolis for the death of George Floyd, which sparked nationwide protests over police brutality and the violent treatment of Black people at the hands of law enforcement. The complaint alleges that the officers involved in Floyd’s death violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free of excessive force and that the city had a pattern and practice of training officers to use deadly force in nonviolent situations. (Schaffer v. Chauvin, No. 0:20-cv-01577 (D. Minn. filed July 15, 2020).)

The complaint recounts the disturbing details of Floyd’s death on May 25 after he was arrested by Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officers. Despite Floyd already being handcuffed and not resisting arrest or the officers’ commands, MPD officer Derek Chauvin brought him to the ground in a prone position and pressed the left side of his face into the pavement. While two other officers knelt on Floyd’s back and legs to pin him down, Chauvin knelt into the back of Floyd’s neck. Despite Floyd’s pleas for help and telling officers, “I can’t breathe,” the officers continued to press on Floyd’s body for nearly nine minutes. They also ignored onlookers’ concerns about blood coming from Floyd’s nose and observations that he wasn’t breathing. The officers maintained their position and delayed summoning medical help for Floyd even after he lost consciousness. Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck even after emergency medical services arrived, and the three other officers on the scene did not intervene to help Floyd after it was clear he was in distress.

A trustee appointed on behalf of Floyd’s family filed a §1983 Fourth Amendment claim against the four officers for depriving Floyd of his right to be free from excessive force. The complaint details how Floyd was not armed, posed no imminent threat to the officers or others, and was compliant and handcuffed when Chauvin applied deadly force.

The complaint also includes a §1983 Monell claim against the city for the unconstitutional patterns and practices that led to the use of excessive force in non-deadly encounters and the city’s deliberate indifference to the rights of arrestees, as well as a §1983 Canton claim that the city failed to train its officers appropriately on the reasonable use of force during arrests and specifically on neck restraints.

The MPD has long trained officers to use deadly force in non-deadly situations. While the department differentiates between “neck restraint” and “chokehold”—categorizing the first as non-deadly force and the second as deadly force—the complaint points out that the only difference is where direct pressure is applied, to the front (chokehold) or back (neck restraint) of a person’s neck and that the distinction is essentially meaningless because a neck restraint can cause serious injury or death from “compressing a person’s veins, arteries, nerves, and muscles of the neck.” The complaint notes that the Department of Justice has warned of the deadly consequences of prone restraints since 1995, and that “due to the well-known risks associated with prone restraint, it has long been national best practice that once a subject is controlled, it is imperative that they be moved from the prone position, and that their breathing be assessed.”

In its allegations against the city, the complaint also discusses the MPD’s failure to terminate officers with a history of misconduct, its use of the controversial “killology” approach to law enforcement tactics, its history of racial bias in policing, and how it was on notice about previous excessive force incidents among its officers.

In separate criminal proceedings brought by the Minneapolis district attorney, Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder, and the other three officers have been charged with aiding and abetting murder.

“This case is not just about the actions of these four officers. It is about the culture of systemic racism and inequalities in community policing that clearly exist within the Minneapolis Police Department—and for that matter, in police departments coast to coast in this country—that gave rise to these actions,” said Benjamin Crump, one of the attorneys representing the Floyd family. “These officers, and others, knew they could act with impunity, given the Minneapolis Police Department’s widespread and prolonged pattern and practice of allowing officers to violate people’s constitutional rights. Therefore, we also demand permanent transparent police accountability at all levels and at all times.”

Antonio Romanucci, who also represents the Floyd family, said, “Police officers across the country have become unnecessarily militarized and react to nonviolent situations with force as opposed to de-escalation tactics because they have been trained in that manner, inconsistent with reasonable police tactics, by their departments. Police encounters are based on learned behavior that violates individual constitutional rights, and the behavior is ratified by authoritarian failure to discipline police officer misconduct. The killing of George Floyd is a textbook example of inappropriate training, an officer who should not have been policing, and a department that ratified his behavior.”

For more on police misconduct cases, see the AAJ Education webinar “Creating Change: An Introductory Primer for Police Misconduct and Civil Rights Cases.”

Kate Halloran is senior associate editor for Trial magazine.