All 4 ex-officers charged in US

Indictments in Floyd case fail to placate protesters pressing for change

Prosecutors charged a Minneapolis police officer accused of pressing his knee against George Floyd's neck with second-degree murder on Wednesday, and for the first time leveled charges against three other officers at the scene, according to criminal complaints.

Floyd, 46, died after Derek Chauvin, a white policeman, knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Prosecutors last week accused Chauvin of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

The new charge can carry a sentence of up to 40 years, 15 years longer than the maximum sentence for third-degree murder.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison had earlier said that arrest warrants were issued for the other three fired officers involved in the incident-Thomas Lane, J.Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao.

Ellison has requested that bail be set at $1 million for each of the four former officers, the documents showed.

"This is a significant step forward on the road to justice, and we are gratified that this important action was brought before George Floyd's body was laid to rest," Benjamin Crump, attorney for the Floyd family, said in a statement.

In response to the just-announced charges, Crump said that this was not a time for celebration since an arrest is not a conviction, adding that the family wanted Chauvin to be charged with first-degree murder.

"You know, we don't want partial justice. We want whole justice,"Crump said.

"The family has always wanted first-degree murder. They wanted him charged to the full extent of the law," he added, referring to Chauvin.

A full autopsy of Floyd released on Wednesday provides several clinical details-including that he had tested positive for COVID-19, but appeared asymptomatic. It also said that Floyd's lungs appeared healthy.

The 20-page report by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office came with the family's permission, and after the coroner's office released summary findings on Monday that Floyd had a heart attack while being restrained by officers, and classified his May 25 death as a homicide.

Former US president Barack Obama, speaking during an online town hall on Wednesday about the repercussions of the Floyd case, said that it was "unlike anything I have seen in my lifetime" and that it offered an opportunity to restrict police violence and cause a political "awakening".

In a statement on Wednesday, former US president Jimmy Carter recalled that in his 1971 inaugural address as Georgia's governor, he had said: "The time for racial discrimination is over," but "with great sorrow and disappointment, I repeat those words today, nearly five decades later."

The 95-year-old called for peaceful protest and systematic change.

"As a white male of the South, I know all too well the impact of segregation and injustice on African-Americans," he wrote. "We need a government as good as its people, and we are better than this."

A ninth straight night

Meanwhile, thousands of US protesters still marched in cities across the country for a ninth straight night on Wednesday, chanting against racism and police brutality. With a key demand met, demonstrators nevertheless staged large and mainly peaceful rallies calling for deeper change in cities from New York to Los Angeles.

Public officials across the nation have labored to balance accommodating the protests while keeping order when the demonstrations turn violent. More than 3,000 protesters have been arrested in Los Angeles County, police said.

In the city of Los Angeles alone, officers have arrested about 2,700 protesters since Friday, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said on Tuesday. In Santa Monica, which saw heavy looting of stores, police made more than 400 arrests, and in Long Beach, 73 were arrested.

Arrests from the protests apparently numbered enough in Los Angeles that police used the Jackie Robinson baseball stadium at the University of California, Los Angeles, to process those in custody, according to The Guardian.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said that Tuesday night was much better.

"The protesters were mainly peaceful; the police officers had the resources and the capacity to do their job," he said.

Linda Deng in Seattle, Chen Yingqun in Beijing, Xinhua and agencies contributed to this story.