Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he thinks George Floyd was murdered and claimed Floyd “would be alive today if he were white.”
Video from the tragic Monday night incident shows a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee into the neck of a handcuffed Floyd, who repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. Floyd was pronounced dead shortly after he was taken into custody.
In an interview aired Thursday morning, Frey told CBS that the arresting officer, Derek Chauvin, “killed someone.”
“I do,” Frey said in response to whether or not he thinks Floyd was murdered. “I’m not a prosecutor, but let me be clear: the arresting officer killed someone.”
“He’d be alive today if he were white,” he added. “The facts that I’ve seen, which are minimal, certainly lead me down the path that race was involved.”
Breaking overnight: New protests erupted overnight over the death of George Floyd. Some people set fires and others looted stores during the demonstrations.
Police say one person was shot dead, and a suspect is in custody.
@JeffPeguesCBS reports from Minneapolis. pic.twitter.com/u9BzbCJ28T
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) May 28, 2020
During a Wednesday press conference, Mayor Frey called on the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office to pursue charges against Chauvin, who was fired Tuesday along with the three other Minneapolis police officers involved in the incident.
“I’ve wrestled with, more than anything else over the last 36 hours, one fundamental question: Why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail?” Frey said. “If you had done it, or I had done it, we would be behind bars right now.”
“I cannot come up with a good answer to that question, and so I’m calling on Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to act on the evidence before him, I’m calling on him to charge the arresting officer in this case,” he added.
Frey asked Gov. Tim Walz to send in the National Guard late Wednesday after rioters looted stores and burned down buildings in a night of destruction that left south Minneapolis in ruins.
The morning after in Minneapolis
pic.twitter.com/71mYRx4qlu— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 28, 2020
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of The Minnesota Sun and The Ohio Star. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Jacob Frey” by CBS This Morning.
