The police officer responsible for the killing of George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, has now been charged with second-degree murder by the state’s Attorney General. The state’s Attorney General, Keith Ellison, said that “the evidence available to us now supports the stronger charge.” With this, the bail has increased the $1 million.
The remaining three officers involved in the case, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao, have all been arrested and charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder by the Attorney General. The Attorney General has acknowledged that a successful prosecution would not be able to rectify the hurt and loss felt by so many following Floyd’s death, and that the path to constructing justice and fairness in our society would be “slow and difficult work.” He has also made it clear that a “sense of duty and responsibility” led him to file the charges against the four. In addition, he said that the charges are “rooted in facts that we can prove.” All four officers are now in custody.
In addition, the county’s top medical examiner has released the full autopsy for Floyd on Wednesday. It was found that Floyd had suffered the coronavirus back in early April, but is now asymptomatic and has deemed it unlikely it had anything to do with Floyd’s death. It has also been concluded that Floyd has died of homicide.
Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper disagreed with President Trump and said that active-duty military troops should not be used to quell protests in America, speaking at a news conference at the Pentagon. The announcement reflects the disagreement in the military with whether or not to deploy troops to control the protests. For example, the Commander in Chief threatened on Monday that he would do that. Esper also emphasized that deploying troops in a domestic law-enforcement role should “only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations.” It is said that the president was angered by Esper’s remarks, and criticized him later at the White House.
The announcement comes as protests rage across the United States for the ninth night in a row following Floyd’s death. Luckily, by this point, most of the rioting and looting seems to have stopped, with only peaceful protests taking place in places like Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. Many cities have also announced plans to lift curfew within the coming days.
Apple has also made clear that law enforcement officials have been notified about the looting of demo devices from Apple Stores. Demo devices contain special software that disables the device if it leaves the range of store wifi, essentially rendering the looted devices useless. Many Apple Stores have now closed and are boarded up.