SAINT PAUL, Minn. (NBC) – An attorney representing eight Ramsey County correctional officers of color has filed discrimination charges with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights against Ramsey County.
The charges allege the eight officers were barred by supervisors from guarding or even being on the same floor as Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd.
When Chauvin was arrested on murder charges, he was initially held at the Ramsey County Jail in St. Paul and according to a complaint filed by the correctional officers, Superintendent Steve Lydon initially only let white officers guard Chauvin.
Attorney Bonnie Smith says her clients, all people of color, were individually told to stop what they were doing and were barred from working on the fifth floor where Chauvin was going to be held. That includes the black officer who was literally in the process of booking Chauvin.
Smith said, “Another officer realized something was wrong because he was in the control room and noticed on the jail’s cameras that all the correctional officers of color were on the third floor.”
Superintendent Lydon, in a statement, said he “erred in judgment,” writing that after the death of George Floyd “I felt I had an immediate duty to protect and support employees who may have been traumatized and may have heightened ongoing trauma by having to deal with Chauvin.”
Smith said, “The idea this order was made to protect my clients is absurd.”
Smith said Lydon never told officers that was his reasoning and the sheriff’s office blatantly denied the segregation to the news company Reuters when they fact checked a report now proven true.
The spokesman told Reuters there was “no truth to the report, and that black corrections officers were in fact “assigned to guard him as part of the regular routine.”
Smith said, “The employees affected by the order were hurt and upset that jail leadership did not trust them because of their skin color. These employees are highly trained professionals, whose job it is to keep each other safe, the inmates safe and the jail safe.”
© 2024 KOBI-TV NBC5. All rights reserved unless otherwise stated.