WINNSBORO, Texas — The death of George Floyd reopened a deep divide in America. Civil rights activists are calling for justice to the officers who were responsible for his death, while law enforcement officials reject the actions that led to it.
“I’ve been doing this for 37 and a half years,” Andy Chester said, “We’ve got a great group of guys up here. And I would never expect any of them to act that way.”
Chester is one of several East Texas chiefs of police who have issued public statements denouncing the actions of the former Minneapolis police officers involved in Floyd’s arrest and death.
Chester, who leads the Winnsboro Police Department, has also been an instructor for most of his career, teaching officers from around the region. He says putting a knee on the back of a suspect’s neck as Derek Chauvin did to Floyd is never taught and putting a knee on a suspect in any way after their handcuffs are on is a bad tactic.
“We teach mechanics of arrest, we teach defensive tactics, and such,” Chief Chester stated. “There’s a way to use your knee, but it’s not on the back on somebody’s neck. I mean, it’s to pin their shoulder down or something like that while you’re getting them handcuffed, and after they’re handcuffed, it’s over with at that point.
“We teach them for four or five solid hours of nothing but handcuffing each other, to where you can do it quickly. And the takedowns, and such, we practice over and over and over and over and over to where it becomes second nature to you.”
After watching the video of Floyd’s death, Chester posted to the department’s Facebook page that he felt sickened and angry. He said there are two possible explanations for why Chauvin acted the way he did.
“Usually, it’s because, when you do something like that, it’s because you, there’s something about you that,” Chester explained, “you either feel like you’re not good enough to do it, or there’s something that sets you off.”
However, it was not just Chauvin’s actions that made Chester angry. It was also the other officers who were on the scene and had lots of time to possibly save Floyd’s life.
“There’s four officers there, and, you know, one of the things we teach here is that if you see an officer losing control, you step in and you take over,” Chester said. “You stop that officer from losing control.
“I always try to teach: maintain self-control.”
Chester says 99% of police officers do not need to learn any lessons from Floyd’s death because they are good people who are proud to be public servants.
“I always tell the guys and girls in our classes, you’re called to do this,” Chester said. “We work for God, I’ve always felt like. We’re doing, we work for God. We’re his servants and you’re called to do this. And if you’re not called to do this, you won’t stay in this line of work very long at all.”
Chester is joined by the police chiefs in Kilgore, Nacogdoches, Hawkins, and more in saying that what happened in Minneapolis cannot and will not happen in East Texas.
“My wife gets on to me because I post stuff on Facebook all the time, says I ought to keep my mouth shut,” Chester joked. “But, you know, there’s some things you just gotta speak out about. And that’s one of those things that I felt like I needed to let our part of the world know that we don’t condone that kind of behavior for our officers here, and we will never condone that behavior for our officers here.”