The black cop charged with aiding and abetting the murder of George Floyd had dreams of transforming the police, according to friends and family.
J. Alexander Kueng, 26, was a rookie cop on his third shift as a fully-fledged member of the Minneapolis police force when he held down Floyd by his back while senior officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the black man’s neck for almost nine minutes.
Kueng has since been fired, charged in connection with the murder, and denounced by some of his siblings for his failure to intervene in Floyd’s death.
Yet before he joined the force, Kueng, who has a white mother and a Nigerian father, hoped to change the police from the inside and believed that more black officers would help change the abuses he saw in the system.
His family has described his involvement in Floyd’s death as a ‘gut punch’.