Over the past decade, only four Minneapolis officers have been removed as trainers because they were unfit, according to department records. Several new hires have quit the force in recent months because they could not take the harassment they endured from their training officers, according to a department source knowledgeable about the departures. Those selected for the duty have to complete a week of training, officials say, but then tend to stay in those jobs for years with little oversight and less accountability. Revelations about Chauvin's history and his conduct on the day Floyd died have drawn further scrutiny of his training role even though his superiors were aware of his at-times questionable decisionmaking.įormer Minneapolis police officials said in interviews that the problem is that there are no hard and fast rules about who can be a training officer. Alexander Kueng, referred to Chauvin as 'sir.' The other officer, Thomas Lane, followed Chauvin's direction to stay put after he asked whether Floyd should be repositioned as they pinned him to the ground before he lost consciousness and died. In body camera footage, some of which was played during testimony last week, that officer, J. Yet despite an ever-thickening personnel file, Chauvin continued to serve as a field training officer, or FTO, even mentoring one of the two rookie cops who first interacted with Floyd outside of a South Side convenience store last May. Over his 19 years with the Minneapolis Police Department, Derek Chauvin, the now-fired officer on trial in the death of George Floyd, racked up 17 misconduct complaints and was involved in four on-duty shootings or other fatal encounters.

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