Derek Chauvin: Officer who murdered George Floyd pleads not guilty in 2017 case of beating Black teen

Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, has pleaded not guilty to using excessive force against another Black person in an unrelated case from 2017. The incident has striking similarities to the killing of Mr Floyd – only this case involves a teenager.

On Thursday, the former officer, who is currently being held in the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Oak Park Heights after being convicted on multiple charges in the Floyd case in April, denied he’d gone overboard during the 2017 arrest of the youth.

The incident began when two officers were called to respond to a domestic incident, where a mother claimed her children had hit her, while her children, including the 14-year-old Black boy at the centre of the case, claimed she was drunk and had assaulted them.

According to a police report Mr Chauvin filed after the arrest, the boy, described as 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, “displayed active resistance to efforts to take him into custody" by "flailing his arms around”, causing the officer to deliver “a few strikes to [the juvenile male] to impact his shoulders and hopefully allow control to be obtained”.

During the Floyd trial, state prosecutors attempted to have this 2017 incident brought into the case as evidence of Chauvin’s past alleged misconduct, but a judge denied their request.

In their filings, the prosecutors said that body camera videos of the 2017 arrest, which haven’t been released, "show a far more violent and forceful treatment of this child than Chauvin describes in his report. The videos show Chauvin’s use of unreasonable force towards this child and complete disdain for his well-being."