The Department of a Justice was reportedly planning to arrest former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and charge him with civil rights violations if he was acquitted of charges relating to the killing of George Floyd, or if there was a mistrial.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Justice Department officials had spent months gathering evidence to indict the ex-Minneapolis police officer on federal police brutality charges, but they did not pursue a grand jury indictment to avoid disrupting the state’s case.
The charges stem from Floyd’s arrest that led to his death, as well as the 2017 arrest of a 14-year-old black boy during which Chauvin reportedly hit the teenager with a flashlight before placing him in a prone position for 17 minutes.
Under the contingency arrest plan, the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office would have charged Chauvin by criminal complaint so they could arrest him immediately, and then asked a grand jury for an indictment, the paper reported.
The DOJ never went ahead with the plan since Chauvin was found guilty on all charges: Second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.Â
But, federal prosecutors will still be moving forward with their case. They plan to ask a grand jury to indict Chauvin and the other three ex-officers involved in George Floyd’s killing — J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao — on charges of civil rights violations.
