A former Lakeshore resident now living in St. Cloud Minnesota called WOMT’s Open Mic program last Friday and spoke to Lee Douglas about the civil unrest taking place in Minneapolis and St. Paul in wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer last week.
“It’s pretty rough,” he said. “What you gotta look at when they do these national interviews is you don’t have 70-year-old people looting these stores, they’re all young people. They’ve been cooped up for two or three months. Some of them haven’t been allowed to graduate. Now I’m not saying what they did is right, but the young people are filled with frustration I think.”
The gentlemen told Lee that he worked not far from where George Floyd was killed and spoke on the frustration echoed by many on why charges have not yet been filed on all four officers involved.
“They immediately fired all four cops that were in the vicinity,” he explained. “We have a large Hmong population up here, and many of them are cops. So they were not discriminating as far as that goes…and the guy with the pressure on the guy’s neck, He’s gonna end up in civil court, and rightfully so.”
Officer Derek Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd on Memorial Day. Charges were filed late last week after a civilian camera caught video of the incident where Chauvin’s knee was firmly placed on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes on a Minneapolis sidewalk.
Reports indicate that officers responded to a call of an individual, identified as Mr. Floyd, trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill and was described as “Intoxicated and belligerent”
The names of the three other officers have yet to be released. Charges could be upgraded against Chauvin based on evidence being reviewed by legal authorities.
