According to The Wall Street Journal, the district attorney of Harris County, Texas suspects that the police officer who arrested George Floyd on minor drug charges in 2004 may have falsified information in the case — which resulted in Floyd serving a brief sentence in a state jail.
"The Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg, also said that due to her office’s examination of Mr. Floyd’s case it could expand a continuing investigation to examine more arrests made by Gerald Goines, who was charged with murder after a botched drug raid in 2019 in which two people were killed," reported Erin Ailworth. "Mr. Goines — who also is charged with tampering with a government record by lying to obtain the search warrant that authorized the deadly 2019 raid — is the officer who arrested Mr. Floyd in 2004 over what Ms. Ogg described as a one-rock, $10 crack buy. Mr. Goines’s criminal case is pending. He has pleaded not guilty."
"Ms. Ogg’s statements suggest that years before Mr. Floyd was killed by a former Minneapolis police officer with a history of complaints on his record, he may have been set up by a Houston officer with a notorious background," said the report.
"'Goines was likely lying in this case,' she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, pointing to several red flags, including that the deal was 'very small time' and that Mr. Goines was the only police-officer witness. 'These are not cases that we would take or that we would accept for charges under my administration.'"
Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on his neck for nearly 9 minutes has ignited nationwide police brutality protests and a broad conversation about the proper function of police in American society.
Some police groups have tried to push back by pointing to Floyd's prior arrests, with the head of the Minneapolis police union saying he had a "violent criminal history."
