George Floyd Remembered, As Officers Appear In Court; Police Violence Caught On Video
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: We'll lay out the strategy.</s>LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Disturbing acts of violence by some law enforcement in several cities caught on video during a night of peaceful protests. Good morning, this is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.</s>ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans, 30 minutes past the hour this Friday morning.</s>JARRETT: As family and friends said goodbye to George Floyd, three former Minneapolis police officers charged in his death appeared in court yesterday pointing the finger at the fourth. Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, Alexander Kueng already mounting a vigorous legal defense illustrating, in part, why the attorney general in that state has said these cases are so hard. Lawyers for the three officers seemed to place the blame directly on Derek Chauvin, the senior officer who pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes. And the lawyers tried to highlight their relative lack of experience.</s>ROMANS: Yes, for two officers, in particular. Now, we've learned it was only Lane's fourth day on the force. He said he tried to give Floyd CPR on the way to the hospital. It was King's third full shift on the job and Chauvin was his training officer.</s>JARRETT: Those details emerging just a half a mile from the memorial site where the family and local officials, like the Minneapolis mayor, were visibly emotional 10 days after a death that has reignited a worldwide movement for change. Today, the Minneapolis City Council will vote Friday on some of the first changes to the police department since all this began. CNN's Miguel Marquez reports from Minneapolis.</s>MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Christine, Laura, this is the memorial to George Floyd. It has been going all week. And today it is -- it is celebratory but it's also -- it feels like a somber protest. This is the spot where George Floyd had his knee to the neck. That mural has been added in the last couple of days, and the stage has gotten bigger and bigger.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's his name?</s>CROWD: George Floyd.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I said what's his name?</s>CROWD: George Floyd.</s>MARQUEZ: And this is what they do all day. They have person after person coming up to the mic. It's become sort of a communal open mic here in this neighborhood. It's also a place where you can get almost anything you need -- water, groceries, Pampers. You can register to vote down here. It's become a real center for the community. This, on the day that George Floyd was memorialized here in Minneapolis.</s>BRANDON WILLIAMS, GEORGE FLOYD'S NEPHEW: Growing up -- I mean, I'm a lot younger than him, but my grandmother raised him. I didn't have a father figure present in my life so I grew up in the same house with him. And, you know, my uncles were more of a father figure in my life and him being the alpha male, I gravitated to him. Coming up, I played sports -- he did. You know, that kind of connected us and brought us real close. I'm trying not to be sad. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.</s>PHILONESE FLOYD, GEORGE FLOYD'S BROTHER: When you spoke to George, they felt like they was the president because that's how he made you feel. He was -- he was powerful, man, He had a way with words. He could always make you ready to jump and go all of the time. Everybody loved George.</s>MARQUEZ (on camera): Mr. Floyd's body will be moved to Houston, Texas where there will be a public memorial on Monday, and then he will be laid to rest in a private ceremony on Tuesday. Three of the officers involved in his death were in court. They had their bail set at at least $750,000. And lawyers for two of them, Keung and Lane, actually said that those officers had only been on duty for a couple of days -- had only been officers for a few days, each. They talked to Officer Chauvin, who -- at the scene, telling him that they -- that he shouldn't be doing this, but that fell on deaf ears. One of the officers even providing CPR in the ambulance on the way to the -- on the way to the hospital. Still, all three officers now charged with aiding and abetting -- second-degree murder and aiding and abetting manslaughter. Laura, Christine.</s>JARRETT: All right, Miguel. Thank you so much for that. A 10th night of protests nationwide remained mostly peaceful. Curfews have actually ended in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. But there is new controversy this morning over alarming incidents caught on video. In response to so many large demonstrations across the country we are seeing, more and more, exactly how police have used force on some protesters. Now, it is impossible to quantify exactly how much this is happening but the camera simply doesn't lie, and this video will be disturbing to watch. Two Buffalo, New York police officers suspended after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old man to the ground. You can see right there the man approaching the officers, then he stumbles backward, hits his head on the ground after being pushed, is bleeding. Police originally said the man tripped. The mayor of Buffalo says the man is hospitalized in serious but stable condition. Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the incident "wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful." The two officers have been suspended without pay.</s>ROMANS: All right. A top cybersecurity official at Google says hackers with ties to China and Iran have tried to access the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and President Trump. Shane Huntley, the head of Google's threat analysis group, said hackers targeted the G-mail accounts of staffers working on those campaigns but they were unsuccessful. The disclosure highlights the continued risk of foreign interference in U.S. elections, even as the country responds to a pandemic and protests across the country. Meanwhile, Facebook announced it will start labeling posts and pages from state-controlled media outlets. The labels will immediately start showing up for users in the U.S. on pages belonging to outlets like "Russia Today" and China's "Xinhua." The labels will eventually be introduced in other countries. Facebook says it's rolling out these labels so users know more about where their information is coming from. Facebook also plans to start blocking state-controlled media outlets from running ads in the U.S. later this summer out of an abundance of caution ahead of the election in November.</s>JARRETT: All right. Well, coming up, after months benched by coronavirus, the NBA is on the verge of tipping off. Coy Wire is back with this morning's Bleacher Report.