Horrifying new body-camera video from a third Minneapolis Police officer involved in George Floyd’s arrest shows how a crowd of onlookers pleaded with the officers to get off Floyd while a white officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee against his neck for nearly eight minutes, killing him. The video, which was released late Thursday, comes from the bodycam of officer Tou Thao, one of four former Minneapolis cops charged in Floyd’s death. During the arrest, Thao held back a crowd of nearly a dozen bystanders, many of whom recorded the scene with their cellphones, as Chauvin pinned down Floyd with his knee. In Thao's body camera footage released Friday, the officer is seen pushing two men as he tried to keep bystanders away from Floyd. At one point in the video, Thao yelled at the group: “This is why you don’t do drugs, kids.”
Two other officers, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, held down Floyd, who was suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store. In Thao’s video, a man wearing a Northside Boxing Club sweatshirt yells at Chauvin to “get off of his... neck, bro” and asks Thao while motioning toward Floyd: “You gonna keep him like that?” The man continues to address Thao, saying: “You gonna let him kill that man in front of you, bro? Bro, he’s not even... moving right now, bro.” “What... are you doing?” a young woman shouts. “He’s dying!” (Editor’s warning: This is the extremely graphic video.)
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