Thomas Lane was accepted to the police academy in January 2019, hired by the Minneapolis Police Department as a police cadet on February 19, 2019 and started as a police officer in December 2019.
So roughly half a year as a policeman.
As far as I can tell MPD has a three month probation period. Which both would have completed and been full officers.
Yeah. I guess Lane's lawyer is lying.
Not sure. Just trying to ascertain the facts. Maybe both are technically right, and one is just minimizing something that so that it seems exculpatory.
Here's what I see elsewhere:
Lane started as a police cadet in 2019 and was a rookie on the force, only on his fourth full-time shift, when on Memorial Day he was one of the first officers to respond to claims that Floyd, 46, had attempted to use a counterfeit $20 bill.
4th full time shift could mean 4th day after his probation period, that is 4th day as a full officer. Though that doesn't say 4th day, but 4th FT shift. Were their other shifts? Wasm this his 4th shoft total, or 4th as a full officer, post-probation (which is what I assume, making it possible to reconcile the disparate info).
I assume this will be more clear later.
I still find it very hard to believe that an officer on his 4th day was paired with another on his 3rd day and yet they were given their own police SUV and were responding to calls as a pair without any supervision. That seems negligent.
If Lane became a policeman in Dec 2019, I'm not sure why he would be on his 4th fulltime shift deep in May. Something doesn't add up. So I'm guessing there was a probationary period not being counted by his lawyer.
Yet Lane and Keung didn't do a bad job. Without much trouble they got the suspect out of his vehicle, handcuffed and even in the police vehicle backseat before Chauvin pulled Floyd out. Lane & Keung will use all that to show they were trying to do things right and follow procedure. They were only thwarted by Chauvin's demented violence, which they unfortunately assisted.