Scolded By The Judge: George Floyd witness talks back one too many times to Chauvin Defense team

the extent i have been and i would continue to fight the fire the way i would right but do you think it would be distracting what if there were 12 people yelling at you and telling you that you were doing it wrong i think um a burning structure in a city where there are buildings and homes and people living on either side is much more concerning than 20 people trying to tell me to do something different right but you wouldn't be distracted by that at all no what if they started calling you names like i said i know my job and i i would be confident in doing my job and there's nothing anybody could say that would disturb me okay so what if they started to physically threaten you i'll repeat myself because i'm confident in my job and what i do and what needs to be done and my training so i would continue to do that what what is staging what does it mean when a fire department stages at an incident there is um it's always different but we can stage to wait for someone to assess what's exactly going on and what how we need to tackle that particular call okay so let's assume there's a call and the police are on scene at the call right and are you starting to interrupt are you talking about a medical call we stage four different things sure let's let's leave it as a medical okay and there's some trouble at the scene does do you just come right in into that emergency call or does fire stage until police clear the scene we stage and wait for police to give code for right code 4 means all clear safe yeah right so in a situation where there is trouble and the police are dealing with that trouble and they know they need a medical personnel to come into the scene yeah medical won't come into the scene until it is called code four right correct all right and um you said in your experience you've been on numerous calls throughout the two years he's been a firefighter right correct and uh what would you agree that a fair number of those may have been calls that started out as call where the police responded first correct so it's usually the police that are there first they do some assessment and they will call for medical correct have you ever been called to a scene where the police didn't call you meaning the police were present and they weren't the ones that called you can you repeat the question sure it's a little confusing police go to a scene right and whatever's happening at the scene and they just don't ever call for medical even though there's a medical situation well i wouldn't know because that means i wasn't called to it precisely right so if you go to a scene it's because you're responding to a call right correct and the reason that you are there is because the police call you if the police are on scene first right if the police are on this first and so in a situation where you see someone having a medical emergency right wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the police had already called for medics it would also be reasonable to assume that if the patient was cuffed i'm going to ask you i'm going to cut i'm going to say objection non-response wait for the question and then answer the question that is asked it's a yes or no question man is it reasonable to assume that if a patient is having a medical emergency and the police are present that they have called for ems your co your question is unclear because you don't know my job so um can't answer sure so let's let's take this scene right may 25th 2020 you walk upon a scene you see someone having a medical emergency right you did not call 9-1-1 to get the medics there right right would it have been reasonable to assume that medics had already been called based on what you saw when you first arrived yes and in fact paramedics did respond right you saw the ambulance come up yes that's not their normal response time okay and so you noticed there was some abnormal response time for medics right and i also noticed that that is precisely the kind of call that fire would respond to and station 17 is just a couple blocks away okay so do officers on scene decide do we call for medic or fire i don't believe so i believe that's dispatch they they call for medical so if attention police call dispatch and they say ems we need ems code three it's dispatch who decides do we send medics or fire well it would be medic it would be fire with medics not just fire ever i don't know the answer to that fair enough but ultimately medics did arrive right yeah eventually and you have no frame of reference of when police called paramedics do you no but i know how long it takes for medics to get to calls typically and i know how long it takes to drive three blocks in an emergency fire vehicle but that presumes that the fire vehicle was not on another call right it would have been a different station that was we would the nearest the nearest two other stations would have been able to respond to that call in three minutes so if you uh first walked on scene at 8 26 29 that was what we just saw yeah 26 29. okay and paramedic and paramedic paramedics had been called at 8 21 that's an abnormal response time based on your experience what time did you say i arrived 8 26 29 and they and the medics arrived at one time the medics were called at 8 21 code 3 i don't believe that but again you have no frame of reference right i mean you've not seen any police reports you've not looked at the cads you've not heard the 9-1-1 calls you didn't listen to dispatch that night that night no not that night okay but i that's totally abnormal and fire would have been added to that call because we go to calls like that all the time right and so it was abnormal it would be completely and totally abnormal in your experience for it to take that long to get to the scene absolutely all right and um are you familiar with the term load and go yes and i believe you had a conversation with uh the bca agents shortly after this incident and you described what you observed as far as the paramedics doing was what's called a load and go right and the and that is essentially if i as i understand it paramedics arrive some something is amiss at the scene so we put them into the ambulance and we move the ambulance to another a safe location to address the need and that's what you observed here right correct and that's uh because there were quite a few people and those people were all fairly upset right correct and so in your mind as a paramedic with the experience at umt or i'm sorry as an emt i apologize but as an emt you've done load and goes before we've done loading those yeah right and so the reason that the medics did not commence at least as far as you understood commence resuscitative efforts for mr floyd was because they were doing a load and go get them away okay that's what you told the agents right uh i don't remember exactly what i told like agents but that would it looked like a load and go to me okay um now in terms of um your again personal experience or excuse me on that day you were the paramedics drove off and then at some other point a couple minutes later is when the truck the fire truck arrives right right and that's how i knew there was something wrong when requesting medical assistance okay because the para or the fire department showed up at cut foods and the ambulance had already left and gone to another location no more because the fire fire whether it's seven teams or a different station would have been able to respond to that call much sooner than medics were all right so in a i mean you you kind of formed that opinion on that day but there were some miscommunications between medics and fire and police um right which i mean not to the fault of medics or fire it's we get a call and we go so it was it was police and dispatch that that miscommunication would have come in okay um and again that five or six minute delay is just unheard of in your experience uh yes uh not by medics but by fire specifically are you trained as an emt in the use of narcan yes sir can you explain what narcan generally is um it's an opioid reversal medication we give it intranasally but a lot of people on the street have a injectable form kind of like an epipen almost right yeah kind of um you testified that the firehouse that you work at uh you deal with a lot of overdose calls and um so you've had a lot of experience dealing with people who are overdosing okay from from opiates or from other controlled substances okay and you have seen um you have seen uh [Music] or dealt with many people who come out of an opiate overdose because of narcan correct um if i if i didn't have narcan though we still give uh if we'll monitor a pulse and give compressions as necessary um i've never not had narcan but i would be able to give medical attention to somebody that had overdosed on an opioid and lost their of hopes okay so let me ask you is it fire department policy when you are going to a call of an overdose that police are also dispatched to that call i believe so yeah and that is because when people are revived from that they often become combative right i'm not often i'm sorry not often but it happens i've seen it happen now i'm going to just kind of talk to you a little bit about um your testimony about may 25th of 2020. you were out for a walk because it was your day off right is that a yes yes sorry uh you're out for a walk and uh you're walking down 30 you're walking westbound on 38th street and you see the lights and you said it's not uncommon to see lights there in my neighborhood not not on that corner but in my neighborhood okay um or in the city right okay and uh as you walked what would be the south east corner of 38th in chicago you talked to you heard a woman say yelling that they are killing him right right and so you did this kind of circle loop to visualize and see what was going on right and um at the point that you came on scene mr floyd was already on the ground right correct and mr floyd um you saw what you what your memory told you was four police officers on him right okay but you now know that it was three right and i think you made some reference about why you videotaped because our memories are fallible right and again a stressful situation can impact your memory right absolutely that's why we're lucky it was videotaped right it's also fair to say that once you kind of came you first talked to officer tao and you'd said that you identified yourself as a minneapolis firefighter right and officer tao asked you to step onto the curb and you did that okay and you would agree that when you first arrived unseen your own personal i'm just talking about you personally your own personal demeanor was much more calm okay and as you were there between 8 26 and 8 30 so in about those four minutes um you would agree that your own demeanor got louder and more frustrated and upset um frustrated and i'm not sure is the word i would use angry more desperate you called the officers a [ __ ] right mm-hmm yeah i got quite angry after mr wood was loaded into the ambulance and there was no point in trying to reason with them anymore because they had just killed somebody so in terms of the in terms of the time that you were there you have no idea what those officers were doing on the side of the car right the officers that i couldn't see from my vantage point is that what you're asking right um you don't know what they were doing i couldn't see the two junior officers um except for maybe like their shoulders up and um so it's fair to say you don't know what they were doing correct you don't know what they were talking about the two of them no and there was a again you described a fairly large crowd 10 12 people that were all in that general area and several people were yelling right right and some people were yelling louder than others right right and some a lot of people were saying things like get off of him right right a lot of people you yourself were saying i want to know it as pulses yep right and some some people were um swearing absolutely and would you describe other people's demeanors as upset or angry um it's i i don't know if you've seen anybody be killed but it's the upsetting is yes i was just going to object as argumentative and proceed i'm going to just ask you to answer my questions as i ask them to okay you also talked about how when you first approached you saw the complete and total body weight of all three officers on mister i never said all three officers i i their body weight was on him the the two in the back their their full body weight was seeming to be on him but that's not something that would kill all right and the but you you testified that okay yes body weight yes body weight yes so just to be clear for the record is clear you testify yes let me finish my question finish question you testified that when you first arrived you observed the weight of all three officers on mr floyd yes or no yes but again once you were ushered or commanded or directed whatever term you want to use to the curve you again as far as the other two officers you are not watching who had their weight where or what i could correct i could not see the other two officers i could see them and they were not talking much i could see their faces um a lot of people were yelling right and again you were not paying attention to what they were saying um just here and there okay so do you remember what the officers were talking about oh the officers no i have no idea they weren't talking all right you also testified that as you were observing [Music] mr chauvin on george floyd that you formed the opinion that mr chauvin's hand was in his pocket and you described him as comfortable correct you also testified that you observed what you thought to be fluid coming from mr floyd's body and you assigned that or you believed that to be urine i i considered that that it was and took that as a sign do you recall telling the agents that it was his urine i don't call and you said that you testified that your focus became really sort of zoomed in on trying to get the attention of the officers right not the attention so much as um trying to reason with them and gain access to get medical attention and you testified that you believed that the other voices the voices of other other people interfered with you you getting their attention i was worried about it but i know that tao could hear me talking because he was responding to me directly now in terms of your the statement that you gave you were interviewed by agents lund matthew lund and agent james ryerson do you recall those names no do you dispute me if i'm telling you okay and would you dispute me if i told you that that interview took place on may 28th of 2020 and before coming into court did you have an opportunity to review your statement at all um i had the opportunity to but i didn't okay um you never read the transcript of your statement or anything i chose not to okay um i just want to just ask you a few questions you you said that officer tao at some point said if you're really a firefighter you should know better correct have you been to other scenes where people are trying to interfere with police officers doing their jobs no not really not that i can recall do you remember telling the agents that you believed that officer chauvin had his hands in his pocket um vaguely remember saying that do you recall telling the agents that you were pretty certain the fluid was coming from mr floyd's body and that's what made you think he was dead i'm sure i said that pretty pretty sure do you recall describing the crowd as a heavy crowd no i don't recall would it refresh your recollection to review the transcript of your statement um i don't want to okay would you dispute me if i told you that you told the agents it was a heavy crowd i no i guess not do you recall after paramedics took mr floyd and then you had a conversation with uh the firefighters that arrived how you described the physical appearance of mr floyd i don't call you recall telling them that he i don't want argument what's your grounds you may impeach if you wish all right i know you don't want to look at your transcript but i may i approach the witness 11 20. i'm just going to ask you to read the underlying portions in your head uh yeah did you describe mr floyd as a small slim man yeah it appeared to uh with three grown men on top if somebody appeared that he was small and frail okay i was finishing my answer witness remains be seated we are outside the hearing of the jury ms hanson i'm advising you do not argue with council and specifically do not argue with the court is that the camera though are the cameras out no they are not we are on the record okay you will not argue with the court you will not argue with counsel they have the right to ask questions your job is to answer them i was finishing my answer i will determine when your answer is done okay and so do not argue with the court do not argue with counsel answer the questions do not volunteer information that is not requested the attorneys for the state have redirect they can ask you questions if they think that certain things were left out okay it is council's prerogative to ask you leading questions and for you to answer those and not volunteer additional information are we clear on this okay thank you come back tomorrow at 9 30. all right do we have the person with the cell phone could we arrange to have that person come down somebody from the state have access to that person if you could have that person come in all right so once again we've been listening in live here to

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Keywords: Chauvin trial, Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, George Floyd video

Id: y2CBkpcxlBU

Length: 28min 45sec (1725 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021