Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Friday that reports claiming she declined to prosecute a Minneapolis police officer involved in the death of George Floyd for a shooting death back in 2006 are “absolutely false.”
Klobuchar told MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that she was already sworn into her Senate seat when a grand jury reviewed the evidence in a case involving Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for his involvement in the death of Wayne Reyes in October 2006.
“I never declined the case,” she told Mitchell. “It was handled and sent to the grand jury by my successor.”
Klobuchar said she was nine months into her Senate term when the case finally made it to a grand jury for possible criminal prosecution. She previously served as the chief legal officer of Hennepin County before running for her Senate seat.
“This idea that I somehow declined a case which has been reported on some news blogs and then sent out on the internet against this officer is absolutely false,” she said. “It is a lie. I don’t know what else to say about it than it is a lie.”
Looking back on all officer-involved shootings, she said sending the cases to a grand jury is “wrong.”
“I think it would have been much better if I took the responsibility and looked at the cases and made the decision myself,” she said, adding it was standard practice to send officer-involved shootings to a grand jury for review.
“But let me make this clear, we did not blow off these cases,” she said. “We brought them to a grand jury, presented the evidence for a potential criminal prosecution, and the grand jury would come back with the decision. That is how we handled the cases.”
On Friday, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced that Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of Floyd.
Klobuchar also called for change to how police officers are hired and trained to stop “systematic racism.”
Mitchell asked whether Klobuchar has considered removing herself from consideration to run as Joe Biden’s vice president.
“First of all this is Joe Biden’s decision,” Klobuchar said. “Joe Biden will decide who he wants in this job.”
She then defended her record as county attorney highlighting a decrease in incarcerations for African Americans as well as several reform measures she implemented. She said she was “heralded by the Innocence Project” for ensuring all cases had DNA evidence, implementing a new eyewitness identification protocol and videoing all police interrogations.
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