Fox News legal analyst Mercedes Colwin told “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday that the officers involved in the arrest of George Floyd, a Minnesota man who died in police custody this week, could all face charges.
Floyd, 46, died Monday night after he was pinned to the ground by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. He has been identified as the officer seen on camera kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he struggled to breathe.
Chauvin, along with three other police officers involved in the incident – Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng – were fired from the force on Tuesday.
“The fact that they were terminated … applause to the police department, they did it so swiftly, within 24 hours, but there is so much more that needs to be done,” Colwin said.
The circumstances surrounding Floyd’s death have weighed on the city and led to protests and in some cases to violence, including stores sets on fire and looting.
“I mean certainly there is reason for outrage,” Colwin said on Thursday. “[It’s a] horrific set of circumstances,” she added, referencing videos of the arrest.
Colwin pointed out that the video shows Floyd “begging, he’s saying he can’t breathe, his neck hurts, his stomach hurts, his body hurts, he’s saying repeatedly, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’ and nothing.”
She also noted that the video shows that there was “no evidence of any resistance” from Floyd.
Colwin said that Chauvin “certainly can be charged with murder two or murder three.”
She explained that he could face second-degree murder charges because of the “circumstances of which he created, which was the asphyxiation of him was certainly there.” She said third-degree murder “is basically reckless endangerment of an individual that leads to the death.”
“But it’s not just the officer that’s kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck, it’s also the other officers that were standing around that could also be charged as accessories,” Colwin explained, adding that they could hear Floyd screaming for help as he struggled to breathe while witnesses pleaded for them to intervene.
“Yet those other officers … were not doing a thing,” she said.
Benjamin Crump, the Floyd family attorney, told the “Today Show” that Floyd’s case is “worse than Eric Garner in many ways because you hear the people even pleading with them, ‘Please get your knee off his neck, have some humanity, this is a human being.’”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has demanded the arrest of Chauvin and called for Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to “act on the evidence before him.”
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On Thursday morning, the Justice Department said that it has made the federal investigation into George Floyd’s death a “top priority” and assigned experienced prosecutors to investigate the killing.
It has also promised a “robust” probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Fox News’ Lucia Suarez and Barnini Chakraborty contributed to this report.
