1 Minneapolis Police Chief: Chauvin Violated Police Policy
The Minneapolis police chief says former officer Derek Chauvin "absolutely" violated department policies during his arrest of George Floyd. Taking the stand in Day Six of Chauvin's murder trial, Chief Medaria Arradondo, who fired all the officers involved in Floyd's arrest the day after it occurred. Arradondo testified that once Floyd "had stopped resisting, and once he was in distress and trying to verbalize that, that should have stopped." Specifically, Arradondo was referring to Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck during an arrest last May. Chauvin's defense got Arradondo to agree one of the police body cameras showed Chauvin's knee appeared to be more on Floyd's shoulder blade, not his neck. The defense said that was just at a specific moment and other angles show the knee on the neck. Still, Arradondo later countered that the problem was less about ‘where’ Chauvin’s knee was and more about the overall method of submission. "The conscious neck restraint by policy mentions light to moderate pressure,” Arradondo noted. “When I look at (the image) and when I look at the facial expression of Mr. Floyd, that does not appear in any way, shape or form that that is light to moderate pressure."
2 CDC: It’s Time To End The Hygiene Theater
It’s officially official: after basically saying the same thing in different ways for months, the CDC is clearly saying getting COVID-19 from surfaces is extremely low. While it is possible to contract COVID-19 from a contaminated surface, because the virus itself can live for some time, the risk is less than one in ten-thousand. On top of that? Plain soap is fine for cleaning. The reason, what’s called the “viral load” – that’s the amount of virus needed to get someone sick. The highest risk to getting infected with the virus remains through respiratory droplets. On a related note, the United States is vaccinating an average of three-point-one million people each day. That's how White House COVID adviser Andy Slavitt opened a briefing yesterday. He stressed that this is not the time to "let our guard down." CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are still ticking up while the death rate is down. She noted that 222 deaths were reported in the U.S. Sunday – that's the lowest number since late March of last year.
3 Two Men On Terror Watch List Caught At Border
Border Protection officials have confirmed that two Yemeni Nationals are in custody sneaking across the southern border. They were both nabbed in Southern California as one was caught in January and the other in March. Customs agents say one was found with a cell phone SIM card hidden underneath the insole of his shoe. In a statement, Customs and border Protection says "these apprehensions at our border illustrates the importance of our mission and how we can never stop being vigilant in our everyday mission to protect this great country." Meanwhile, CBP officials say the immigrant surge numbers this year so far are record breaking. CBP says in March over 170-thousand illegal immigrants were stopped by immigration agents at the southern border. Of that number, 18-thousand are unaccompanied children which is a new monthly record.