The Minneapolis City Council voted Thursday to grant more than $8 million in settlements for two people who sued over 2017 incidents in which George Floyd’s convicted killer allegedly kneeled on their necks, according to CNN.
Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty in April 2021 of murdering Floyd the previous May, having knelt on Floyd’s neck during an arrest until he died. The city is settling with John Pope and Zoya Code for $7.5 million and $1.375 million respectively, resolving their separate lawsuits over Chauvin’s alleged treatment of them long before Floyd’s death, CNN reported.
Pope reported that, during a 2017 domestic dispute call when he was 14 year old, Chauvin restrained him for 15 minutes with his knee on Pope’s neck and upper back after hitting him in the head with a metal flashlight, according to the outlet. Chauvin admitted to these actions after Floyd’s death.
Code alleged that, in responding to Code’s mother’s call the same year that her daughter had assaulted her, Chauvin carried a handcuffed Code out of her house by the arms and “gratuitously slammed Zoya’s unprotected head on the ground” before placing his knee on her neck.
The City of Minneapolis said Thursday that Chauvin lied about Code’s arrest in his police report, and “many significant details in the officers’ reports” about Pope’s incident “are not consistent with what happened,” CNN reported. Naming other officers who were on the scene during those incidents, Code and Pope’s lawsuits argued that the Minneapolis Police Department had failed to stop Chauvin’s pattern of excessive force prior to Floyd’s death.
“Derek Chauvin is exactly where he should be, which is in federal prison,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Thursday, according to CNN. “He should have been fired in 2017. He should have been held accountable in 2017. … If the supervisors had done the right thing, George Floyd would not have been murdered.”
The footage of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck went viral in May 2020, and protests and riots occurred that summer in cities across the country. Chauvin pleaded guilty in December 2021 to depriving Floyd and Pope of their constitutional rights, and is currently serving more than 20 years in prison.
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