With methamphetamine and a high level of fentanyl in his system, Floyd had been resisting arrest, leading to one of the four officers, Derek Chauvin, employing the department-approved Maximal Restraint Technique (MRT), where the suspect is handcuffed face down and the officer’s knee is placed on the upper back near the neck in order to subdue the suspect until emergency medical services (EMS) arrive.

Video of a white police officer with his knee holding down a prone black man for nine minutes crying out “I can’t breathe” and calling for his mother spread like wildfire across social media. When EMS finally arrived, Floyd was loaded in to the ambulance and taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. The narrative was instantly cemented—police brutality and systemic racism.

According to the documentary, The Fall of Minneapolis, produced by Alpha News, the official autopsy showed that Floyd died of cardiac arrest, with the drugs in his system as a contributing factor, rather than solely from the restraint technique used by Chauvin. No matter—a perfect storm had been whipped up in order to make political gains.

Minneapolis burned with riots night after night. The 3rd police precinct was abandoned and torched by rioters. Riots spread to 140 cities across the country leading to the largest civil unrest damages in U.S. history.

One of the four Minneapolis police officers on scene that day was Tou Thao. Thao never touched Floyd but instead kept bystanders at bay. All four officers would be jailed and charged—Thao with “aiding and abetting” murder. Thao was sentenced to over five years in prison, serving three.

Now released, Tou Thao joins us to tell us about the George Floyd incident and how God providentially and graciously used the miscarriage of justice against Thao to bring him to saving faith in Christ.