The retconning of George Floyd
Bari Weiss's Free Press is the latest outlet to tout a conspiratorial documentary alleging that Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted. It's all nonsense.
(Note: This is part one of a three part series that also includes a coda. You can read part two here, part three here, and the coda here.)
For a few precious days after the death of George Floyd, there was at least a clear consensus across the political spectrum — there was near-unanimity that what Darnella Frazier captured on her cell phone was a crime. An outrage. A thing to be denounced.
As Floyd lay handcuffed on his stomach, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s back for nine minutes as Floyd became unresponsive, then went limp, then died. Even the most vocal police supporters condemned Chauvin’s actions, though with obligatory disclaimers that Chauvin was a rogue, aberrant bad apple, and that no one should judge all law enforcement officers by his actions.
The consensus wouldn’t last. As protests heated up around the country, far-right pundits began to break away. They pointed to Floyd’s criminal record, the violence at some of the protests, and the allegedly radical positions of the organizers. Dennis Prager, the radio host and founder of a fake university, marveled to his audience how “decent” MPD officers had been to Floyd.
A couple months later, Chauvin’s defense team filed a motion that included some preliminary — and admittedly odd — comments that medical examiner Andrew Baker made to a prosecutor about Floyd’s health and drug use. Those comments were then picked up by right-wing and law enforcement outlets, and a counter-narrative was born.
By the time of Chauvin’s trial in April 2021, far-right pundits, politicians, and social media accounts with large followings were openly defending Chauvin, openly rooting for his acquittal, and openly angry when he was convicted.
Tucker Carlson, uninhibited by any intellectually honest grasp of U.S. history, proclaimed that Chauvin was about to be “lynched.”
These defenses of Chauvin continued sporadically, then got a boost in August 2022 when Liz Collin, a Minneapolis TV reporter and the wife of infamous Minneapolis police union leader Bob Kroll, self-published the book They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, and The Death of George Floyd. Collin had been a longtime anchor for the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis. Both she and Kroll were targeted by activists after Floyd’s death, including protests outside their home. Collin left the station in January 2022. Depending on who you believe, she was either forced out or resigned after she was removed from the anchor position. She then joined a conservative-funded outlet called Alpha News.
Collin’s book provided further fuel for far-right bomb throwers and conspiracy theorists, but her allegations didn’t really take off until she, Alpha News, and a former police officer named J.C. Chaix made The Fall of Minneapolis, a crowd-sourced documentary based on the book.
TFOM makes some nutty claims, including that the FBI ordered George Floyd’s autopsy to be altered to incriminate Chauvin, an allegation that echoes the contempt southern coroners had for FBI investigators looking into lynchings and the murder of activists during the civil rights era. Collin also interviews Chauvin, Chauvin’s mother, Chauvin’s lawyer, and a half dozen or so current and former Minneapolis police officers who still support Chauvin
By last October, far-right white grievance mongers like Carlson had been amplifying Collin for months. Carlson dedicated portions of his show — which by then was hosted on X — to pushing the documentary and its allegations. Those episodes were then touted by Elon Musk and the tech-bro social media ecosystem until it eventually wound up on the Facebook page of every racist uncle in America.
The documentary has inspired some inflammatory rhetoric. Where there was once agreement among most conservatives that Derek Chauvin was a rogue cop whose murder of George Floyd was witnessed by a good chunk of humanity, for much of the right, Chauvin is now a political prisoner who has been framed by craven state and federal officials who caved to the social justice mobs. A poll taken after the verdict found that nearly half of Republicans thought Chauvin should have been acquitted.
By the end of last year, the documentary had been amplified by more mainstream conservatives. Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly touted her interview with Chaix and Collins by claiming to have “new” body camera footage that would “change the narrative.” The footage had been publicly available for more than two years.
The documentary has since been promoted by the New York Post, on the podcast hosted by John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, and by “heterodox” voices like Brett Weinstein.
The latest outlet to run with these claims is the Free Press, founded by former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, in a piece by Coleman Hughes.
The Free Press feels like new territory for these conspiracies. A number of people have sent me Hughes’s column, including longtime readers of my own work who tell me they find it persuasive. Hughes, though a fellow at the far-right and reliably pro-police Manhattan Institute, isn’t viewed as a demagogue like Carlson. He’s been described as “a thinker to be reckoned with” and “one of the most prolific and insightful commentators on race and class in the United States.” The Free Press itself claims to be “built on the ideals that once were the bedrock of great journalism: honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence.”
As far as I know, the Free Press is the first major publication that doesn’t self-identify as conservative to cover the documentary reverently, and to amplify its claims — though its critics would say that despite its claim to “fierce independence,” the Free Press is, in fact, pretty conservative.
Hughes’s piece, then is, a useful lens through which to analyze which TFOM allegations seem to be resonating with a broader audience, and for that reason, I think it’s worth a detailed response.
The documentary makes a lot of outlandish claims, but I want to focus mostly on the two that I’ve seen most often. These are also the two claims that Hughes spends most of his piece promoting.
The first claim is that when Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s back and neck for nine minutes, it could not have been criminal assault because the Minneapolis Police Department has trained its officers -- including Chauvin -- to use that very technique.
The second claim is that Floyd’s official autopsy found that he died of a heart attack brought on by cardiovascular disease and drug use. Therefore, Chauvin could not have been responsible for Floyd’s death.
Both of these claims are false. The first claim is not only incorrect, the documentary engages in deceptive editing and convenient omissions to push it. In other words, the documentary is lying. The second claim is also incorrect, but the explanation is a bit more complicated.
I’m going to address the first claim in this post. I’ll look at the second claim in my next post. I’ll also put up a third and final post addressing some of Hughes’s other points, and what I think this massive effort to retcon Floyd’s death is really all about.
So let’s dig in to that first claim, which goes something like this:
When Derek Chauvin put his knee and weight on George Floyd’s back and neck for nine minutes it not only wasn’t a crime, it was MPD policy, and it was a tactic that the department had taught to Chauvin and other officers for years.
Here’s how Hughes sets it up:
In order to convict Chauvin of felony murder . . . they had to prove that (1) Chauvinʼs actions constituted assault (or attempted assault), and (2) that Chauvinʼs actions caused the death of George Floyd. The documentary throws both claims into doubt. What I discovered by making my own calls and confirming the documents shown in the documentary is that these key claims are not certain at all . . .
Central to proving the first element—felony assault—was the question: Why did Chauvin have his knee on Floydʼs neck and shoulder blade in the first place? If it was an “improvised position,” as an MPD inspector testified at the trial, then it plausibly constituted felony assault. But if it was a hold that Chauvin, along with the entire MPD, was trained to do in precisely this kind of situation, then it becomes far harder to argue it was assault.
According to the documentary and documents I have reviewed, the move was indeed a standard hold, called the Maximal Restraint Technique (MRT), which the MPD trained its officers to use “in situations where handcuffed subjects are combative and still pose a threat to themselves, officers, or others, or could cause significant damage to property if not properly restrained,” according to the official MPD use-of-force manual. The section that describes MRT is dated to 2002 and was updated in 2014, 2017, and 2018. (The 2023 edition bans MRT.)
It’s interesting that Hughes assures us early on that he’s the sort writer who “makes his own calls,” and only makes those calls after he “confirms the documents.” This is supposed to make us trust him. He doesn’t take anyone’s word for it. He can’t be spun. He does his own research.
Except it seems pretty clear that he doesn’t.
So let’s start here: It is true that MRT was once a procedure taught and used by the MPD. It is not true — not by a long shot — that MRT is what Derek Chauvin used on George Floyd.
I pulled up the relevant part of the MPD policy manual, the portion that was in use in 2014.
Here’s what it says about MRT. I have put the most relevant portions in bold.
A. Maximal Restraint Technique – Use (06/13/14)
The Maximal Restraint Technique shall only be used in situations where handcuffed subjects are combative and still pose a threat to themselves, officers or others, or could cause significant damage to property if not properly restrained.
Using the hobble restraint device, the MRT is accomplished in the following manner:
a. One hobble restraint device is placed around the subject’s waist.
b. A second hobble restraint device is placed around the subject’s feet.
c. Connect the hobble restraint device around the feet to the hobble restraint device around the waist in front of the subject.
d. Do not tie the feet of the subject directly to their hands behind their back. This is also known as a hogtie.
3. A supervisor shall be called to the scene where a subject has been restrained using the MRT to evaluate the manner in which the MRT was applied and to evaluate the method of transport.
B. Maximal Restraint Technique – Safety (06/13/14)
1. As soon as reasonably possible, any person restrained using the MRT who is in the prone position shall be placed in the following positions based on the type of restraint used:
a. If the hobble restraint device is used, the person shall be placed in the side recovery position.
2. When using the MRT, an EMS response should be considered.
3. Under no circumstances, shall a subject restrained using the MRT be transported in the prone position.
4. Officers shall monitor the restrained subject until the arrival of medical personnel, if necessary, or transfer to another agency occurs.
5. In the event any suspected medical conditions arise prior to transport, officers will notify paramedics and request a medical evaluation of the subject or transport the subject immediately to a hospital.
6. A prisoner under Maximal Restraint should be transported by a two-officer squad, when feasible. The restrained subject shall be seated upright, unless it is necessary to transport them on their side. The MVR should be activated during transport, when available.
7. Officers shall also inform the person who takes custody of the subject that the MRT was applied.
C. Maximal Restraint Technique – Reporting (06/13/14)
Anytime the hobble restraint device is used, officers’ Use of Force reporting shall document the circumstances requiring the use of the restraint and the technique applied, regardless of whether an injury was incurred.
Supervisors shall complete a Supervisor’s Force Review.
When the Maximal Restraint Technique is used, officers’ report shall document the following:
How the MRT was applied, listing the hobble restraint device as the implement used.
The approximate amount of time the subject was restrained.
How the subject was transported and the position of the subject.
Observations of the subject’s physical and physiological actions (examples include: significant changes in behavior, consciousness or medical issues).
Let’s go through the problems with Hughes’s analysis one by one.
First, the MRT was not as Hughes puts it, “a hold that Chauvin, along with the entire MPD, was trained to do in precisely this kind of situation.” The MRT was taught as a temporary hold to be used only long enough for police officers to administer a restraint device called a hobble.
This is what a hobble looks like:
Once the hobble is in place, the policy requires officers to move the suspect onto his side and into the “recovery position” “as soon as reasonably possible.”
In other words, the entire reason the MPD taught the MRT -- the only reason it was included in the MPD manual -- was to incapacitate a suspect, but only long enough for police to administer a hobble, which is less dangerous, after which they were to immediately allow the suspect to recover.
This is a problem for Chauvin, because he never used a hobble on Floyd. He and the other officers discussed using one at various points over the nine minutes, but they never did.
So even if we concede that the hold Chauvin used on Floyd is the MRT described in the manual (it isn’t), it was only supposed to be used briefly, and only to incapacitate a suspect long enough to use a device that Chauvin never used. The MRT was not intended -- and neither Chauvin nor anyone else was ever trained in it -- for use on a handcuffed, prone suspect for nine minutes.
Second, the very first point in the MPD policy manual’s discussion of MRT states that it “shall only be used in situations where handcuffed subjects are combative and still pose a threat to themselves, officers or others, or could cause significant damage to property if not properly restrained.”
George Floyd clearly did not want to be arrested. He argued, pleaded, and filibustered. He passively resisted. He was scared, and was probably high. But it’s a stretch at best to say he posed a threat. He never struck, threatened, or harmed an officer or bystander. The defense claimed Floyd was a threat because of his size and the fact that he appeared to be on drugs. But police officers aren’t permitted to use force on a suspect because he might be a threat. He needs to actually exhibit threatening behavior.
Third, let’s return to the portion of the manual instructing police to roll suspects into a recovery position “as soon as reasonably possible.”
Floyd was not visibly struggling against Chauvin once he was taken to the ground. Over the next several minutes, Floyd told Chauvin more than 20 times that he couldn’t breathe. Chauvin ignored all of these pleas but one, to which he responded, “Then stop talking, stop yelling. It takes heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.”
(Chauvin’s comment echoes a common retort from officers when a suspect pleads that he is unable to breathe — “If you can talk, you can breathe.” This is incorrect.)
After six minutes, Floyd became unresponsive. He then went limp. At this point, bystanders began to plead with Chauvin to remove his knee.
“He’s not responsive right now, bro,” one man said. “Check his pulse right now and tell me what is,” said a woman, who then again demanded, “tell me what his pulse is right now.”
At about this point, Chauvin had the following exchange with Officer Thomas Lane:
Lane: Should we roll him on his side?
Chauvin: No, he's staying put where we got him.
Lane: Okay. Just worry about the excited delirium or whatever.
Chauvin: Well that’s why we got the ambulance coming.
Lane: Okay, I suppose.
When Lane asked Chauvin the same question a couple minutes later —“Should we roll him on his side?” — Chauvin didn’t respond.
Next, Officer J. Alexander Kueng then told Chauvin that he couldn’t find Floyd’s pulse. Onlookers continued to plead with Chauvin to remove his knee.
“Bro, he’s not fucking moving,” one said. “Get the fuck off him. What are you doing? He’s dying,” said another. And then still another, “He’s not even fucking moving. Get off his fucking neck, bro. Get off of his neck.”
Chauvin ignored all of them. After Floyd went limp, Chauvin kept his weight on him for another three minutes.
As soon as is reasonably possible is a subjective phrase. But even if you think Chauvin's hold on Floyd is indistinguishable from the MRT once taught by MPD (and again, it isn’t), and even if you think Floyd was a threat to the officers or to bystanders (and again, I don’t think he was), surely once Floyd was unresponsive, once he’d gone limp, once he showed no sign of a pulse — surely then he was well past the point at which it was “reasonably possible” to turn Floyd on his side.
It’s just wildly dishonest for Hughes to not mention any of this.
Hughes conveniently provides a link to the 2023 version of the MPD manual, so you can click over to see that MRT has now been banned. But he does not link to the 2014 version I’ve excerpted above. This is curious. He doesn’t link to the version of the manual that Chauvin was allegedly trained on, that lays out the MRT procedures, and from which Hughes and the documentary selectively quote to argue for Chauvin’s innocence.
Why would that be? The charitable explanation is that Hughes was unable to find the 2014 version online. This seems implausible, for a few reasons. First, I was able to find the old policy with a quick Google search. Second, if we are to take Hughes at his word that he’s a “confirm the documents myself” kind of guy, surely he looked up the old policy instead of merely taking the documentary’s characterization of it at face value. But finally, and most importantly, Hughes quotes from the 2014 policy in his piece. So he clearly read it.
This leaves us with a less charitable explanation for why Hughes wouldn’t provide a link: He didn’t want you to see the portion that clearly contradicts the point he’s trying to make.
Hughes also doesn’t address that the hobble was the purpose of the MRT at all. The word hobble doesn’t appear in his column.
But TFOM producers Chaix and Collin did attempt an explanation for all of this, albeit a preposterous one. In an interview with Glenn Loury’s The Glenn Show, they seize on some imprecise wording from the 2014 MPD manual to argue the following: Chauvin could not have violated the department’s MRT policy because while the manual does say, “If the hobble restraint device is used, the person shall be placed in the side recovery position,” the policy is silent on what officers should do if they use MRT but do not use a hobble.
There’s an obvious reason for this “omission” — the manual doesn’t authorize MRT for any purpose other than to administer a hobble. Chaix and Collin are suggesting that the authors of the 2014 manual were concerned enough over the risks of MRT that they required any officer who used it for its authorized purpose to move a suspect into the recovery position after doing so, but also deliberately left officers free to do whatever they want if they use the hold for a non-authorized purpose.
This is just not a plausible reading of the manual. Or of any manual. Or of the entire purpose of manuals.
There’s one more important piece of context to all of this: There’s a reason why the MPD manual explicitly warns of cardiac arrest and instructs officers to roll suspects into a recovery position. In 2010, a man named David Smith died under very similar circumstances. Smith died while lying face-down with an MPD officer’s knee in his back. Like Chauvin, the officer continued to put his weight on Smith even after Smith became unresponsive.
Smith’s family settled their lawsuit against the city for $3 million. Part of the settlement was a requirement that MPD provide better training on positional asphyxia and the importance of rolling suspects into a recovery position as soon as possible.
Next, Hughes, TFOM, and pundits like Carlson have made a big deal of the fact that the judge at Chauvin’s trial refused to let jurors see a PowerPoint slide that they claim proves Chauvin’s hold on Floyd was taught by MPD. When Chauvin’s defenders discuss this issue, they’ll often show the training slide and a photo of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd side by side. Here, for example, is a screen grab from the documentary. Chauvin is, of course, the photo on the left. The photo on the right is from the training slide.
Here’s Hughes:
Whatʼs more, an MPD training presentation created and shown to academy recruits in 2018 includes a slide showing an officer performing a hold very similar to the one Chauvin used on Floyd.
At his trial, Chauvinʼs lawyers wanted to show the jury the above photo from the MPD PowerPoint slide.
But the prosecution moved to exclude it, and Judge Cahill agreed. Their reason was that Chauvin could not prove that he had been personally trained on that photo. But this rationale does not survive scrutiny. In the documentary, six current and former MPD police officers affirm that the MRT was indeed standard training—training they had received themselves. When asked if he was trained on MRT, Rich Walker, an African American MPD sergeant with 19 years on the force, replied: “Yes, all the police officers were trained in MRT.”
Body cam footage shows that, as the officers were taking Floyd out of the squad car, Officer Thomas Lane verbally recommended that they implement the MRT (though he misspoke and called it “MRE”). If Officer Lane, who had been on the force for less than a week, was aware of MRT, then it defies belief to think Chauvin, a veteran of almost twenty years, was unaware of it—regardless of which particular material heʼd been trained on.
It isn’t hard to see why the defense wanted the jury to see the photo from the slide. And if you look only at the photos, and if TFOM is your only source of information about these photos, you might think the two photos depict the same tactic.
But let’s look at the photos more closely. Note that in the slide photo, the officer is shifting his weight backward, and most of his weight is on his heel. Note the clear tension that his weight creates on his toes and the ball of his foot. Only his knee is on the suspect, and his body is off to the side. Here’s a close-up from that portion of the photo:
Now look at “Exhibit 17,” the photo of Chauvin that was used at trial. He’s upright, and none of his weight is resting on his foot. His toe is positioned in a way that shifts more of his weight onto Floyd.
Here’s the diagram that the state’s pulmonologist used at Chauvin’s trial:
MPD officials testified at the trial that officers were taught that the MRT requires “light to moderate pressure.” According to the autopsy report, Floyd had bruises and abrasions on his left shoulder and the left side of his forehead, cheek, and mouth. This is the side of his body that Chauvin ground into the pavement. Floyd also had abrasions on his nose.
The documentary doesn’t mention any of this. Nor does Hughes.
But just as Hughes and the documentary do, I’ve been holding something back from you. The training slide that Chauvin’s defenders want you to think exonerates him? It also has text. It’s big, easy to read text. And that text is incredibly damning.
Here’s the full slide with the text included:
It’s just gobsmacking that anyone could read the text above and think this slide is remotely exculpatory for Chauvin.
The text not only tells officers to be cautious of cardiac arrest because it can be common after a struggle with police, like the 2014 MPD manual, it also instructs officers to “place the subject in the recovery position to alleviate positional asphyxia.”
This is probably why the documentary only shows the full slide only for a fraction of a second before it zooms in on the photo. This has the beneficial effect of pushing the text offscreen before viewers can read it.
There’s a reason that text is on the slide. Preventing positional asphyxia isn’t about making suspects comfortable. It isn’t a courtesy. It’s about life and death.
I’ll discuss this more in my next post about the autopsy, but generally speaking, positional asphyxia occurs when someone is stuck in a position that restricts their ability to breathe. In Floyd’s case, medical expert witnesses for the prosecution told jurors that the weight Chauvin put on Floyd’s back and neck restricted his ability to expand his chest and diaphragm. This limited both his oxygen intake and his ability to expel carbon dioxide. So Floyd was starved of oxygen even as CO2 built up in his blood, a lethal combination that ultimately resulted in cardiac arrest.
This sort of in-custody death is not uncommon. Back in 2020, USA Today found more than 130 incidents over the last decade in which someone died in police custody from positional asphyxia. The paper pointed out that this is almost certainly an undercount, given how little scrutiny we give to in-custody deaths. There’s also some new research suggesting that many deaths wrongly attributed to the dubious diagnosis of “excited delirium” may have actually been caused by positional asphyxia.
Remarkably, toward the end of his piece, Hughes just casually brushes all of this aside. He writes:
. . . you could make the case that Chauvin departed from his training by failing to roll Floyd onto his side—into what the MPD use-of-force manual calls the “side recovery position”—once he lost consciousness. But that error may or may not have amounted to a crime, and surely would not have amounted to felony murder.
This is astonishingly glib. Hughes essentially characterizes a policy put in place to prevent unnecessary death as little more than a suggestion.
Recall that the 2014 MPD manual did not call for officers to roll suspects over “once they’ve lost consciousness.” It called for them to roll suspects over as soon as reasonably possible. It did so because four years earlier, a man died because police officers failed to do so.
Once you’ve lost consciousness, you’ve already been starved of oxygen. This is why most departments (including MPD, according to trial testimony) instruct officers to constantly monitor a suspect’s breathing and responsiveness. A loss of consciousness would be the absolute latest possible warning, the most obvious, big honking red flag telling an officer that it’s time to roll a suspect over. At that point, there is zero chance of resistance. There is no threat to police or bystanders.
Yet Chauvin continued to deprive Floyd of oxygen another three minutes after he went limp. And not only did he fail to monitor Floyd’s breathing, he ignored warnings from both bystanders and a colleague that Floyd was in peril.
This is why the pulmonologist who testified for the state said that even a perfectly healthy person would likely have died under such conditions.
So here we have two very different interpretations of the same policy. I think one is orders of magnitude more plausible than the other. Hughes clearly does not. But as the sort of writer who prefaces his columns with assertions that he “confirms the documents,” you’d think he might consult other authorities — other documents — to see which interpretation is correct. The most obvious authority here would be other police manuals.
If Hughes had been curious enough, for example, he might have found this manual from the Orange County, California, Sheriff’s Department:
Once secured, the person should be placed in a seated or upright position and shall not be placed on his/her stomach for an extended period as this may potentially reduce the person's ability to breathe . . .
. . . The deputy is to ensure the person does not roll onto and remain on his/her stomach
. . . The deputy is to look for signs of labored breathing and, where practical, take appropriate steps to relieve and minimize any obvious factors contributing to this condition.
He might have found countless tweets like those below, from cops who were stunned at what they saw in the George Floyd video:
He might also have consulted the manual of the LAPD, the third largest police department in the U.S., which says that “as soon as practical” after administering a hobble, officers should “place the individual in an upright, seated position.”
He might have consulted the manual of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the largest sheriff’s department in the country, which says this:
“Positional asphyxia” means situating a person in a manner that compresses their airway and reduces the likelihood that they will be able to breathe normally. This includes, without limitation, the use of any physical restraint technique, device or position that causes a person’s respiratory airway to be compressed or impairs the person’s breathing or respiratory capacity. This also includes any technique in which pressure or bodyweight is unreasonably applied against a restrained person’s neck, torso, or positioning a restrained person in a prone or supine position without proper monitoring for signs of asphyxia.
If he looked hard enough, Hughes might have also discovered that as long ago as 1995, the NYPD policy manual warned: “As soon as the subject is handcuffed, get him off his stomach. Turn him on his side or place him in a seated position. If he continues to struggle, do not sit on his back. Hold his legs down or wrap his legs with a strap.”
The italics are not mine. They’re in the document itself.
Here’s a 2003 training video, also from the NYPD, that even diagrams how positional asphyxia works.
Back in 1995, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a bulletin to police departments that warned about positional asphyxiation. “As soon as the suspect is handcuffed,” it read, “get him off his stomach.”
Hughes might have also found a training bulletin that the Chicago PD issued to officers in 1999, which warned that “positional asphyxia can occur when a subject’s chest is restricted from expanding properly or the position of the subject’s head obstructs the airway. Officers should never . . . put weight on the subject’s back for a prolonged period.”
Or he might have found this article on the pro-law enforcement site Police1 — eight months before Floyd’s death — warning about the danger of asphyxia in suspects who are handcuffed while face down.
Or this advice from Lexipol, the private company that has written policies for more U.S. police departments than any other entity.
Positional asphyxia is a serious condition that can become life threatening with little warning . . .
Positional Asphyxia becomes more likely when the person is restrained with their arms behind the back and in a stomach-down position. This is a risk no matter if they are on the ground or in the back of a patrol car or transport van.
To prevent positional asphyxia, get a person off their stomach and into the seated position as soon as practical. In the patrol car, make sure they are in an upright position and check their status frequently. Make frequent wellbeing checks and make sure they are not allowed to lay face down for any length of time.
Hughes might have also found any of the myriad reports after Floyd’s death about in-custody deaths from positional asphyxia, most of which found that police departments have been warning about it for years, and most of which included quotes like this one, which a law enforcement trainer gave to the A.P.:
Every department has policies on this. Every law enforcement agency trains their officers, advises them, cautions them on this very restraint issue — positional asphyxia.
Or he might have found this NPR piece about the 2010 death of David Smith at the hands of the MPD, which includes this quote from another officer who trains cops on restraint techniques: “We ought to have it stamped, or maybe a tattoo, on the back of our hand, that as soon as the person is subdued or restrained, then get off them.... get them into an upright position or on their side to facilitate breathing.”
So to sum up, it’s true that until recently, the Minneapolis Police Department trained officers in something called the Maximal Restraint Technique. In it, officers were instructed to use a knee to apply light to moderate pressure on the back of a suspect who posed a threat to police, others, or themselves. But the knee was to be applied only for a short period of time — specifically, only long enough to apply a hobble — after which officers were to turn the suspect on his side as soon as reasonably possible. They were also taught to be aware of positional asphyxia, to be alert to the possibility of cardiac arrest, and to monitor suspects the entire time.
Derek Chauvin put approximately half his weight on George Floyd’s back for around five minutes, and then shifted his weight onto Floyd’s neck for an additional four — for a total of nine minutes. Chauvin never used a hobble. He never moved Floyd to a recovery position. And even after Floyd was unresponsive, had gone limp, and showed no sign of a pulse — even as onlookers pleaded with Chauvin that he was killing Floyd and fellow officers told him Floyd had no pulse and suggested rolling him onto his side — Chauvin continued to put his weight on Floyd for another three minutes.
Chauvin’s use of force on Floyd was not a simple error. It was not a “departure from policy.” It was callous disregard for another man’s life. It was blithe indifference to George Floyd’s humanity.
Despite the fact that most police departments recognize that positional asphyxia is real, dangerous, and potentially lethal, Hughes and TFOM next use — and misuse — statements from actual police officers and officials to blur the line between MRT and Chauvin’s hold on Floyd.
Hughes, for example, points out that the documentary interviews six officers who say they were trained on MRT. This is only damning if you think the method Chauvin used to hold Floyd down isn’t significantly different than MRT. And if your first exposure to all of this is Hughe’s column, you probably do think this, because Hughes has already told you as much.
Yet despite his reputation as an independent thinker, Hughes is doing little more than regurgitating the documentary, here. That’s unfortunate, because the documentary is strikingly dishonest.
When addressing the MRT issue, for example, TFOM shows short clips from the trial testimony of MPD inspector Katie Blackwell and former MPD chief Medaria Arradondo, who led the department from 2017 through 2022. It then blows what they said completely out of context.
In researching this post, I came across the YouTube video below, which was posted by an account called Willemedia. It breaks down how TFOM dishonestly clips the testimony of these two MPD officials. I don’t know who runs the account, so I can’t vouch for this person’s credibility more generally. However, I think this particular section speaks for itself, and I include it here because I didn’t want to take credit for the legwork someone else has done.
In the first clip used by TFOM, a prosecutor asks Blackwell — who previously oversaw MPD’s training — if the technique depicted in “Exhibit 17” is an approved MPD technique. Again, remember that Exhibit 17 is a photo of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd.
She answers, “It is not.” TFOM then skips over a good chunk of what she says next, and cuts to something she says later: “I don’t know what kind of improvised position that is. So it’s not what we train.” This is the only portion of Blackwell’s testimony that TFOM shows.
In the portion that the documentary skips, Blackwell explains the myriad ways that what Chauvin is doing to Floyd in Exhibit 17 departs from MPD training and policy. TFOM producers don’t want you to see this, because it destroys the core contention of their entire argument — the false claim that what Chauvin did to Floyd is indistinguishable from MRT. You can see both Blackwell’s full answer and the way TFOM edits it in the Willemedia video above.
In the second clip, a prosecutor poses a similar question to former chief Arradondo: Is what Chauvin is doing to Floyd in Exhibit 17 part of MPD training? He answers that it is not. The documentary then quickly cuts to Chauvin’s mother, who says that when she heard that answer from Arradando, she wanted to jump off her chair and yell “Bullshit!”
Here’s that portion of TFOM:
What the documentary doesn’t show is the portion of Arradondo’s testimony in which he explained at length what we’ve already covered here. He described MRT, how it was trained, and that the MPD authorized officers to use the technique solely for the purpose of applying a hobble.
For some reason, I’m not able embed the video below to begin at the correct time stamp, but jump to 1:16:45 to see Arradondo discuss MRT.
Like Hughes, the documentary wants you to think that MRT and Chauvin’s hold on Floyd are one and the same. It wants you to think that each time an MPD official denied on the stand that officers had been trained to do what Chauvin did to Floyd, they were lying. It wants you to think they were talking about MRT.
This is all shamelessly dishonest. But it gets worse. On at least two occasions, the documentary just flat out lies about all of this.
The first lie begins when Collin interviews Chauvin about MRT. We then get the montage Hughes mentions, as several MPD officers confirm to Collin that they were personally trained in MRT. Again, this is only scandalous if you think the MRT and Chauvin’s hold on Floyd are the same maneuver.
After the montage, the camera cuts to Collin, who is face to face with one additional MPD officer.“Your police chief said on the stand that he didn’t recognize that technique,” Collin says.
The officer replies, “Mmm hmm. I heard him say that. It’s tough to hear people lie. Just straight lie.”
Here’s that portion of the documentary. (Note that this is also the part that shows the MRT training slide, then quickly zooms in to the photo to crop out the damning text.)
So Collin sets up a false premise by showing cop after cop affirming they were taught MRT. She then asks one officer how she felt when her chief said in court that he didn’t recognize “that technique.” But the technique he “didn’t recognize” isn’t MRT. It’s what Chauvin was doing to Floyd.
As the officer goes on, the documentary flashes to the portion of an MPD policy manual that addresses MRT and spends a few seconds on some introductory language about the need to subdue combative and threatening suspects. It then cuts to a more recent version of the manual. Amusingly, for a split second, the documentary actually shows the portion of the manual that says MRT should only be used to administer a hobble, but not long enough for viewers to actually read it. It then quickly pans up to the corner, where someone has highlighted the fact that the policy on MRT has been updated several times over the last decade. The documentary lingers here for few seconds. This is what you’re supposed to be looking at — the fact that MPD has not only trained officers on MRT, but has revised the training several times.
But even here, you can catch a glimpse of what they’re not telling you — the portion of the manual that makes clear that MRT is only to be used for administering a hobble.
I took a screen shot:
This glimpse, which I suspect was an editing oversight, is the closest the documentary comes to addressing the fact that MRT was taught only for the purpose of administering a hobble.
The second lie comes toward the end of this portion of the documentary. Collin, again referring to the testimony current and former MPD officials gave at Chauvin’s trial, says, “Several of those witnesses claimed that MRT . . . was not a part of Minneapolis police policy.”
This is just false, and it’s hard to see how Collin wouldn’t know that it’s false. MPD officials never testified that the department didn’t teach MRT. They said that the technique depicted in Exhibit 17 — the photo of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd — wasn’t MPD policy. Because it wasn’t.
Finally, Hughes and TFOM make a big deal of the fact that Judge Peter Cahill didn’t let the jury see the MRT slide at Chauvin’s trial.
Here’s Hughes again:
At his trial, Chauvinʼs lawyers wanted to show the jury the above photo from the MPD PowerPoint slide. But the prosecution moved to exclude it, and Judge Cahill agreed. Their reason was that Chauvin could not prove that he had been personally trained on that photo. But this rationale does not survive scrutiny. In the documentary, six current and former MPD police officers affirm that the MRT was indeed standard training—training they had received themselves. When asked if he was trained on MRT, Rich Walker, an African American MPD sergeant with 19 years on the force, replied: “Yes, all the police officers were trained in MRT.”
Note that the officers in the documentary don’t say the slide was part of their training. They only say they were trained on MRT.
But the implication here, which is also a common talking point among the right-wing personalities who obsess over this stuff, is that Cahill’s refusal to allow the slide into evidence is more proof that Chauvin’s trial was rigged from the start.
Here’s what actually happened: Every court in the country requires attorneys to establish a foundation before presenting a piece of evidence to a jury. You have to show why the evidence is relevant. This is not controversial. It’s taught in every law school, and the bar here is pretty low. If the slide had indeed been part of Chauvin’s training, it shouldn’t have been difficult for his defense team to present it.
The easiest way to do this would have been to call Chauvin to the stand and simply ask him if he’d been trained on the slide. That would have been more than enough. They could also have called anyone who had gone through the training at the same time as Chauvin.
They didn’t do either of those things. For Chauvin at least, there’s a good reason the defense wouldn’t have called him to testify. Defense attorneys rarely ask defendants to testify because it would subject them to cross-examination.
But the defense couldn’t find anyone else to say Chauvin had been trained on the slide, either. Because he hadn’t.
From the state’s reply brief in Chauvin’s appeal:
But the evidence indicates that Chauvin did not witness the original event at which this photograph was taken, that he did not view the presentation in which it was included during his time as an MPD officer, and that he did not see this slide or the photograph at any time prior to George Floyd’s death. As Officer Nicole Mackenzie, the MPD officer “in the best position to speak to” the slide and the photograph, has explained, the individuals depicted in the photo are not “Minneapolis Police Officers” and are “not in Minneapolis Police uniform.” And Chauvin would not have received the training in which this image was included.
That training “was originally created in 2018 for the MPD Academy” and was shown to “Cades and Recruits . . . while they are participating in the MPD Academy.” Officer Mackenzie indicated, however, that “this presentation” has never “been included in the in-service training” provided “for the purpose of continuing education” for existing officers. As a result, Chauvin would never have seen or been trained using this slide or photograph prior to Floyd’s death.
Tellingly, in his appeal, Chauvin’s attorneys abandon the claim that their client was trained on the slide. I suspect this is because they knew it wasn’t true.
Instead, they made a different argument. They argue that the mere fact that the slide was part of any training material proves that what Chauvin did to Floyd was reasonable, and therefore not a crime. From their brief:
Regardless of whether Chauvin was trained on this technique or not, the issue is whether it was “objectively reasonable” for him to restrain Floyd by putting his knees on Floyd’s back. Whether Chauvin saw the training materials is not relevant—the issue is whether Chauvin’s use of his knee on Floyd’s back was reasonable and the fact that MPD training materials actually contained the above picture approving such a technique is evidence tending to show Chauvin’s use of his knee was reasonable.
This is worth some emphasis: Hughes and the documentary producers are advancing an argument that Chauvin’s own lawyers abandoned in his appeal. Hughes himself even links to the defense filing above. So even as he’s arguing that Chauvin must have been trained in MRT, he links to a filing that all but concedes this it isn’t true. (This seems like a good example of why you should always “confirm the documents” before relying on them!)
As for the argument Chauvin falls back on in his appeal, I think at this point we’ve pretty well established why the slide does not establish the “reasonableness” of what Chauvin did to Floyd. But I’ll recite it once more: The two holds aren’t similar. Chauvin put far more weight on Floyd than MPD teaches, he utilized the hold for a much longer period of time than MPD teaches, and he failed to employ the potentially lifesaving steps that MPD teaches.
One more thing on this point: Recall that Hughes makes hay of the fact that one officer on the scene at the time of Floyd’s death — Officer Thomas Lane — had only been on the force for a week. Hughes brings this up in an attempt to defend Chauvin. But Lane’s role in all of this is actually quite damning for Chauvin.
Here’s why: Hughes writes, “If Officer Lane, who had been on the force for less than a week, was aware of MRT, then it defies belief to think Chauvin, a veteran of almost twenty years, was unaware of it.”
Hughes makes this point in the context of discussing this allegedly exculpatory training slide. He’s arguing that if a rookie like Lane had seen the slide, then Chauvin must have seen it as well.
After “confirming the documents,” we now know that this too isn’t true. The slide was created in 2018, and was only used to train recruits and cadets at the MPD academy. So while it seems likely that Chauvin was trained in MRT, the slide could not have been part of that training.
And ironically, because of this, we also know that of all the officers on the scene when Floyd died, only one probably saw the slide during his training: Thomas Lane. He’s the only officer who would have been a cadet when that slide was part of the MPD’s academy training.
What else do we know about Thomas Lane? Well, we know that he was the one officer on the scene who seemed to understand how important it is to roll a suspect into the recovery position. Recall that it was Lane who twice urged Chauvin to remove his knee and roll Floyd onto his side. And both times, Chauvin refused.
Chauvin’s defenders want him to benefit from a photo on a training slide because they think it looks vaguely similar to the hold he put on Floyd. But they only want you to look at the photo superficially. They don’t want you to look at it carefully enough to see how the photos are different. And they definitely don’t want you to notice the text on the slide emphasizing the dangerousness of the hold, how important it is for any officer who deploys it to also take necessary, potentially lifesaving precautions, and the fact that the entire reason that text exists — both on the side and in the manual — is because MPD officers killed a man 10 years earlier using that very technique.
They also want you to disregard those warnings despite the fact that, according to medical experts, Chauvin’s failure to heed them is precisely why George Floyd is dead.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals wasn’t impressed with the training slide argument. Here’s what a panel from the court wrote when they unanimously rejected Chauvin’s bid to overturn his conviction last April.
Chauvin cannot demonstrate that the exclusion of the slide prejudiced him. The text on the slide explicitly instructed the officers to “[p]lace the subject in the recovery position to alleviate positional asphyxia” when using MRT. As a result, even if admitted, the evidence would have further shown that Chauvin failed to follow the MPD training and used unreasonable force. Chauvin’s argument fails.
Chauvin has since appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. Both declined to review his conviction.
Up next, I’ll look at the erroneous claim that George Floyd died of natural causes, and not because of the weight Derek Chauvin put on his back and neck for nine minutes.
Here’s a quick preview: Coleman Hughes does not appear to have “confirmed the documents.”
(Addendum: Hughes has responded to this series. You can read my response to him here.)
This is why Radley is absolutely indispensible.
Gotta love the "honest intellectual" putting out shocking lies like that.