Years before now-fired Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the neck of a Black forgery suspect named George Floyd until he died, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who was Minnesota’s top prosecutor, had a chance to bring charges against him but didn’t. According to The Guardian, Klobuchar was Hennepin County attorney in 2006 when Chauvin was involved in a police shooting. She did not prosecute, and the case instead moved to a grand jury. In 2008, the grand jury declined to charge the officers.
Klobuchar was chief prosecutor and Chauvin had 17 complaints filed against him over the years, with all but one closed without discipline, according to records BuzzFeed News obtained and shared on Twitter.
Even that discipline only came in the form of a letter of reprimand. And Chauvin wasn’t the only officer Klobuchar spared.
She failed to bring charges against more than two dozen cops who killed citizens on duty, including Chauvin, The Guardian reported. But Klobuchar didn’t exactly detail her own prosecutorial failures in her call for justice in Floyd’s death Tuesday on Twitter.
“Every single person in every single community in this country deserves to feel safe,” Klobuchar said in her Twitter statement. “As the Mayor of Minneapolis noted, this tragic loss of life calls for immediate action.”
The same statement was true more than a decade ago, according to Ira Latrell Toles, an alleged victim of Chauvin's. He told The Daily Beast he didn't immediately recognize Chauvin as the same cop who beat him up in his own bathroom and shot him in the stomach 12 years ago, but Toles’ sister confirmed that it was Chauvin.
“The officer that killed that guy might be the one that shot me,” Toles had texted his sister on Tuesday. “They said his last name and I think it was him.”
“It’s him,” she responded immediately.
Toles told The Daily Beast if Chauvin were disciplined properly, it may have prevented Floyd's death. “If he was reprimanded when he shot me, George Floyd would still be alive,” Toles said.
Chauvin was a seven-year veteran of the Minneapolis police force when he shot Toles May 24, 2008 on a domestic violence call, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. [Editor's Note: This incident happened after Amy Klobuchar left the Hennepin County Attorney's office and was elected to the U.S. Senate.] Police told the newspaper a 911 operator could hear a woman screaming for someone to stop hitting her. When Chauvin and another officer arrived at the scene of the call, Toles ran and when officers tried to arrest him, he grabbed one of their guns, according to police. That's when Chauvin reportedly fired at Toles, the Pioneer Press reported.
Toles told The Daily Beast the mother of his child called the police on him, but he was surprised when several officers arrived without announcing themselves. He said when he saw that an officer had breached the front door, he ran to the bathroom. “Then [Chauvin] starts kicking in that door,” Toles said. “I was in the bathroom with a cigarette and no lighter.” He said Chauvin broke into the bathroom and started hitting him with no warning. "My natural reaction to someone hitting me is to stop them from hitting me," Toles said, admitting that he struck the officer back.
“All I could do is assume it was the police because they didn’t announce themselves or ever give me a command,” Toles told The Daily Beast. “I didn’t know what to think when he started hitting me. I swear he was hitting me with the gun.”
Toles ended up pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge in the incident. “To turn a misdemeanor disorderly situation into a felony situation that could have resulted in me dying? He tried to kill me in that bathroom.”
Chauvin, who was initially put on paid administrative leave, was eventually allowed back into the field.
“I knew he would do something again,” Toles told The Daily Beast. “I wish we had smartphones back then.”
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*Editor’s note: The first paragraph of this story has been updated to clarify the timeline and to add that the case in 2006 went to a grand jury.
