The force used on George Floyd during his arrest was "totally unnecessary", a veteran homicide detective said at Derek Chauvin's murder trial.
Lieutenant Richard Zimmerman, who's been heading the homicide division in the Minneapolis Police Department for over a decade, said that Chauvin's actions had gone against official policies.
"If your knee is on somebody’s neck," he said. "That could kill him."
This was Day 5 of the ongoing murder trial (lieutenant Richard Zimmerman's testimony begins at the 47:30 mark)Zimmerman called into question the defendant's need to physically restrain Floyd in the manner he did, considering he'd been handcuffed.
"Once the person is cuffed, the threat level goes down all the way," the department's top detective, who's been at the Minneapolis Police Department since 1985, told those present at the trial.
"How can that person hurt you?" he asked, adding that "you getting injured is way down." Zimmerman stated that keeping an individual in the position Floyd was in while in handcuffs, "restricts their breathing."
The officer told prosecutor Matthew Frank that he had never been trained to kneel on a person he was arresting.
When asked by Frank whether Chauvin's method of kneeling on Floyd's neck was justifiable in that particular circumstance, Zimmerman maintained that it was "totally unnecessary".
"First of all, pulling him down to the ground face-down and putting your knee on a neck for that amount of time is just uncalled for," he added. "I saw no reason why the officers felt they were in danger if that’s what they felt, and that’s what they would have to have felt to use that kind of force."
In the latter part of his testimony, Zimmerman said that an officer could potentially place their knee on an individual's upper back while they were subduing them.
Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter after he knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes. Floyd's subsequent death sparked a wave of protests after footage of his arrest circulated online.
The trial, which started on March 29, is expected to last about four weeks.
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