Minneapolis – The former Minneapolis Police Chief, Media Arrado, vividly remembers having received a call around midnight from a community activist. The person he called told him to see a video that extended on the social networks of a white officer who holds a black man to the ground, despite his “I can’t breathe”.
The dying man was George Floyd. The officer was Derek Chauvin. And Arrado was the first black police chief in the city.
“He was absolutely heartbreaking,” said Arrado, 58, in an interview before the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s murder.
What he saw in conflict with what his own people had told him about the mortal encounter, and immediately knew that he would mean changes to his department and city. But he acknowledged that not to immediately foresee how Floyd’s death would reverberate in the United States and around the world.
“I served for 32 years,” he said. “But there is no doubt of May 25, 2020, it is a decisive moment for me in my public service career.”
The video shows Chauvin kneeling in Floyd’s neck, holding it to the pavement outside a convenience store where Floyd had tried to use a falsified invoice of $ 20 to buy cigarettes. Chauvin kept the pressure for 9 1/2 minutes despite the pleas of the spectators to stop, even after a firefighter out of service tried to intervene and another officer said he could not find the pulse.
“Pain and anger remnants”
Arrarando sat down for the interview in a public library that was very damaged in the riots that followed the death of Floyd. It is in Lake Street, a main artery that saw some of the worst destruction, a street that, according to him, still has “remains of pain and anger of what happened five years ago.”
Just for the block, there is the empty shell of a police station that was burned during the riots. And in view there is an objective store and a Cub Foods supermarket that took place. The shop windows remain tapeed. While some companies were rebuilt, empty lots sit where others do not.
Arradoando is still with his decision of his and Mayor Jacob Frey to leave the third enclosure and let it burn. The protesters violated the building, and the police, which extended, did not have the resources to maintain it. Then he ordered his officers to evacuate.
“During the most significant crisis we have experienced, possibly in the state, when life or death is, I have to go to keep people alive and safe,” he said.
Police reform
Subsequently, Arrado helped to launch a review of surveillance in the city despite a resistant police culture and a powerful officer union. He testified against Chauvin in his trial for murder of 2021, a rare violation of the “blue wall” that traditionally protects officers to be responsible for irregularities.
Five years later, Arrado, who retired in 2022, said he believes that the agencies of application of the law throughout the country have progressed in police responsibility, although an incremental progress, and that police chiefs and sheriffs now move faster to hold officers responsible for atrocious misconduct.
Arrarando was promoted to Chief in 2017, and his elevation was received with hope among local African Americans who affectionately called him “Rondo.” But his department had the reputation of being too fast to use force and many were angry that the police kill young blacks in Minnesota and beyond.
Arrado said he would like to have made more changes in the police department before Floyd was killed.
“I would have pressed more and before trying to dismantle part of the toxic culture that allowed that indifference to exist that night, on May 25, 2020,” he said. “Certainly I would have invested more time raising the voices in our community that had been pleading with police departments for decades to listen and change.”
Making peace
Arradondo has just published a book, “Chief Rondo: Ensure justice for the murder of George Floyd”, which explores leadership, justice and race, the broader impacts of surveillance and the challenges of working within a defective system. He closes it with a letter dedicated to Floyd’s daughter, Gianna.
“I never had the opportunity to meet Gianna, but I wanted him to know that, although he was not there that night, at that intersection when his father asked for help, that I heard it, and that I was going to do everything possible to bring justice,” he said.
He wanted to say the words that she has not had news of the four former officers who were convicted of her roles in the death of George Floyd:
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry they take the father.”
