Charges against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will "very likely" be upgraded from third degree murder to a first degree charge, Ben Crump, the attorney representing the family of George Floyd, the man who died when Chauvin pinned him to the ground with a knee to his neck, said Tuesday.
"If this was you or I, nobody would question first degree murder," Crump told NBC "Today" co-anchor Hoda Kotb. "Why is it when a white police [officer] kills a black person in America, we act like it's such a difficult thing to charge them with what we would be charged with?"
Independent doctors conducting an autopsy for Floyd's family determined the cause of his death was mechanical asphyxia. It was caused by a knee to the neck for almost nine minutes and then two knees to the back pressing his lungs so they couldn't work and send air and blood to his brain, and that concludes his death was a homicide, said Crump.
Crump said Floyd's family has also heard that the three police officers who were standing near Chauvin and Floyd, but did not stop their fellow policeman, will face criminal charges.
The violent riots and looting that have erupted in America's cities were not started by protesters, but by "police brutality and a racist criminal justice system," said Crump.
"The only way to put out these fires is to have police accountability and equal justice," he added. "We don't want two justice systems in America, one for black America and one for white America. We need equal justice for the United States of America. That will make our children believe they are part of the American dream."
Meanwhile, the Floyd family is prepared to have memorials in his name in Minneapolis, in his birthplace in North Carolina, and in Houston, but "they are asking everybody to just take a breath and let's try to heal our community and heal our souls together."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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