Never-before-seen surveillance video shows a new angle of George Floyd’s fatal encounter with Minneapolis cops — that prompted a 911 dispatcher to report the incident to a police sergeant while watching unfold live on a surveillance monitor.
Dispatcher Jena Lee Scurry, the first witness called at the murder trial of ex-cop Derek Chauvin in Floyd’s death Monday, said she saw city officers pin the dead man down for so long that she thought “the screen was broken.”
“I became concerned that something might be wrong,” Scurry told prosecutor Matthew Frank.
That prompted her to reach out to her supervising sergeant, Scurry said.
“I don’t know, you can call me a snitch if you want, but we have the cameras up for (squad) 320s call,” Scurry said during the call. “They got something out of the back of the squad and all of them sat on this man.”
The footage from a traffic camera across the street from a Minneapolis Cup Foods shows Chauvin and three other cops trying to get Floyd into the police vehicle — which can be seen shaking from the struggle.
The officers then put a handcuffed Floyd on the ground, where Chauvin can be seen with his knee on the dead man’s neck “for an extended period of time,” Scurry said.
The video is the latest angle of Floyd’s death to be made public.
The second witness called, Alisha Marie Oyler, who worked at a Speedway across the street from Cup Foods, said she saw the scuffle between Floyd and the officers outside.
The 23-year-old witness said she had gone outside to smoke a cigarette.
Oyler, who also recorded the incident on her phone, said she did so because “the police, they’re always messing with people and it’s wrong and it’s not right.”