The transcripts make clear that Floyd was trying to cooperate with police but was deathly afraid of them, at times telling them that he had had covid-19 and was worried that he was going to die because he couldn’t breathe while in their custody. As one of the officers — Derek Chauvin — pressed a knee into his throat and held Floyd on the ground, he told Floyd that he must be okay because he was able to speak, saying that he was using up a lot of oxygen pleading for help.
“They going to kill me,” Floyd said as officers sat atop him in the street, according to the transcripts. “They’re going to kill me man.”
Floyd went lifeless minutes later and was pronounced dead.
The newly disclosed transcripts of body cameras worn by J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas K. Lane, two of the four former Minneapolis police officers charged in Floyd’s death, were disclosed in court Wednesday as Lane’s attorney sought to dismiss charges against his client, arguing there is not enough evidence that he committed a crime.
Lane, according to the transcripts, appeared to ask Chauvin — the most senior officer at the scene — if they should reposition Floyd. Chauvin, according to the transcripts, declined and instead opted to wait for emergency medical help to arrive, keeping his knee on his throat well after Floyd lost consciousness.
The transcripts offer an expanded view of the events that led up to the Memorial Day slaying of Floyd, 46, who died after being pressed into the pavement for eight minutes. It was eight minutes that would transform into one of the largest and most-sustained series of protests in U.S. history, eight minutes that would change the course of the American conversation on police brutality, social justice and racism.
The transcripts also offer more details about Floyd’s encounter with police and perhaps lay out the arguments that will dominate the proceedings as the officers are tried for his death. They show that Floyd appeared to be afraid of any dealings with police, saying he had been previously shot by an officer and did not want it to happen again. He said he did not want to be placed in a squad car, said he wouldn’t hurt anyone, and numerous times explained that he couldn’t breathe and worried that he was going to die.
They also show that officers at least briefly questioned the tactics of their superior, only to be rebuffed as Floyd took his last gasps of air.
Chauvin, the white officer who was shown with his knee on Floyd’s throat, has been charged with second-degree murder, while the other three officers at the scene — Kueng, Lane and Tou Thao — have been charged with aiding and abetting murder.
Officers had responded to a 911 call from Cup Foods complaining of a customer who had passed a counterfeit $20 bill. Kueng and Lane were the first officers on the scene, and the transcripts show that a store clerk pointed them to where Floyd and two others sat in a parked car nearby.
Transcripts show that Lane approached the car and called on Floyd at least five times to show his hands, drawing his gun when he didn’t. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Floyd responded, according to a transcript of Lane’s body camera. “I didn’t do nothing. … What did I do though? What did we do, Mr. Officer?”
As Lane asked him to step out of the car, Floyd apologized several times and repeatedly asked the officer not to shoot him.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. God dang man. Man, I got shot. I got shot the same way, Mr. Officer, before,” Floyd told Lane, the transcripts show. “Mr. Officer, please don’t shoot me. Please man.”
“I’m not going to shoot you,” Lane replied.
The transcripts show Floyd continued to ask officers not to shoot him as he stepped from his vehicle and suggest he struggled with officers as they tried to handcuff him. “Stop resisting Floyd!” Shawanda Renee Hill, a witness inside the car, called out, according to the transcript of Lane’s camera.
As Kueng walked Floyd across the street, Lane asked Hill about Floyd’s behavior. “Why’s he getting all squirrelly and not showing us his hands and just being all weird like that?” he asked, according to the transcript.
“I have no clue, because he’s been shot before,” Hill said.
Lane asked if Floyd was “drunk” or “on something.”
“No, he got a thing going on, I’m telling you, about the police,” Hill replied. “He have problems all the time when they come, especially when that man put that gun like that.”
Along with the body camera footage transcripts, Lane’s attorney filed several photos from inside Floyd’s car, including one that he said depicts two counterfeit $20 bills. The image does not show the bill that prompted the 911 call from Cup Foods, which was turned over to police.
Ben Crump, an attorney representing the Floyd family, did not respond to a request for comment about the new court filings.
According to the transcript of Kueng’s body camera, the officer sat Floyd down on the sidewalk and explained that he was being detained for suspicion of passing fake U.S. currency. Floyd said he understood.
“And do you know why we pulled you out of the car? Because you was not listening to anything we told you,” Kueng told him, according to the transcript.
“Right, but I didn’t know what was going on,” Floyd replied.
“You listen to us, and we will tell you what’s going on, all right?” Kueng said.
“Yes sir,” Floyd told him.
Lane asked Floyd whether he was on drugs while Kueng pointed out the “foam” around his mouth. But Floyd insisted he was on “nothing” and had been playing basketball earlier.
“You acting real erratic,” Kueng said.
“I’m scared man,” Floyd replied.
According to the transcripts, the officers tried placing Floyd in the squad car, but he resisted, repeatedly telling them he was “claustrophobic” and had “anxiety.” He begged to be released from his handcuffs, promising he wouldn’t hurt anyone. “Y’all, I’m going to die in here,” he told them. “I just had COVID man, don’t want to go back to that.”
By then, Chauvin and Thao had arrived as Kueng and Lane were struggling to get Floyd in the car. It’s unclear whether they were attempting to assist, but at one point, an unknown officer sought to intervene, according to the transcripts. “Man, you’re going to die of a heart attack,” one of the officers told Floyd. “Just get in the car.”
Floyd began to bleed from the mouth, after bumping his head inside the vehicle, and Lane called emergency medical help to the scene. Floyd began to complain that he couldn’t breathe. “I just had COVID, man,” Floyd said. “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Please one of you listen to me.”
Chauvin asked whether Floyd was going to jail, and the officers pulled him from the car. “Get him down on the ground,” Chauvin said.
The transcripts show Floyd continued to complain that he couldn’t breathe and called out for his mother. The officers restrained him on the ground — Lane at his feet, Kueng at his back and Chauvin at his head.
“You’re under arrest guy,” Chauvin told him.
“All right, all right. Oh my god. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this,” Floyd said. “Mama, I love you … Tell my kids I love them. I’m dead.”
“You’re doing a lot of talking, man,” Chauvin replied.
As the officers held Floyd to the ground, Chauvin asked the other officers if Floyd was “high.” Kueng told him they’d found “a pipe on him.” Floyd again told the officers he couldn’t breathe. “You’re doing fine. You’re talking fine,” Kueng said, as Lane told him to take a “deep breath” and Chauvin told him to “relax.”
“My neck hurts,” Floyd said.
“Uh huh,” Chauvin replied. “You’re doing a lot of talking, a lot of yelling.”
“They going to kill me,” Floyd said. “They’re going to kill me man.”
“Takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to say that,” Chauvin said.
Attorneys for Lane and Keung, rookie officers who had been on the force for less than a week before Floyd’s death, have argued their clients were merely following orders from Chauvin, the senior officer at the scene, as they kept Floyd pinned to the ground even as he complained of struggling to breathe. Floyd ultimately lost consciousness.
The transcripts show Lane asked Chauvin several times if Floyd should be moved.
“No, leave him,” Chauvin told him. “Staying put where we got him.”
Lane told Chauvin he was worried about “excited delirium,” citing a forensic term that has been used by medical examiners to describe the sudden in-custody death of individuals who may be under the influence of drugs or in an agitated state.
“That’s why we got the ambulance coming,” Chauvin said.
“Okay, I suppose,” Lane replied. A few seconds later, he told Chauvin that he believed Floyd had passed out. When an off-duty firefighter on the scene pressed the officers to check Floyd’s pulse, Kueng couldn’t find one.
“Huh?” Chauvin replied, according to the transcript. In the filing, Earl Gray, an attorney for Lane, pressed for charges against his client to be dropped, citing the body camera footage as proof that his client had not played “an intentional role in aiding the commission of a crime” or that he was aware that Chauvin was committing a crime
The transcript suggests the ambulance arrived about two minutes later. Video shows that Chauvin removed his knee from Floyd’s neck only when prodded by a paramedic. Lane jumped into the ambulance with medics and began performing chest compressions in an attempt to revive Floyd, who was by then in full cardiac arrest, according to the transcript of Lane’s body camera.
A medic quizzed Lane on whether Floyd had been fighting with the officers. Later, another medic informed Lane that Floyd had “crashed” in the ambulance.
“I wonder what he was on,” the unidentified person said.
“Not sure, but yeah, he seemed very agitated and paranoid,” Lane replied.
“That’s a shame,” the person said.
“Yeah,” Lane responded.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner found that Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death. But its report cited “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression” as the cause of his death, not drugs.
A Hennepin County judge last month set a tentative trial date of March 8 for the four former officers. Prosecutors have signaled they are pushing for all four men to be tried together, but Judge Peter A. Cahill said he is still weighing the question of joint prosecutions.
The officers are set to be in court for a pretrial hearing on Sept. 11.
