Nearly five years have passed since the arrest and heart attack of George Floyd and race-based rhetoric and riots took hold of America.
While the mainstream media in Minnesota and beyond became obsessed with reminding us about “who is Black” and “who is White,” they overlooked many important perspectives.
Among them are the voices and perspectives of Alex Kueng (“the Black officer who actually arrested George Floyd”) and his family.
Those who were critical of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement—and the influence of BLM activists who sat beside former Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo just hours after Floyd’s death—were also overlooked.
Alpha News senior reporter Liz Collin spoke with Alex over the years, including while he was in prison, when he reunited with his mom at the airport after his release, and during the court proceedings of Minneapolis Assistant Chief of Police Katie Blackwell’s failed defamation lawsuit against Liz Collin, Alpha News, and others.
As the Black officer who arrested Floyd—just three shifts after becoming a full-fledged Minneapolis police officer—Kueng has a unique perspective.
As an adolescent who grew up in north Minneapolis (in a mixed-race family), his views on race and crime defy much of what politicians and the media want you to believe instead.
Along with comments Alex offered during an interview from prison, Alex’s mother, Joni Kueng (a long-time educator in Minneapolis) and AK Kamara (the National Republican Committeeman for Minnesota) shared some of their insights and perspectives on Alex’s behalf.
The conversations include criticisms of former Chief Arradondo, his new book, and the self-admitted involvement of Black Lives Matter activists—just hours after Floyd’s death.
Donations to Alex and the Kueng family can be made via GiveSendGo.
Excerpts from Collin’s conversations follow.
Liz Collin: What is it that you want people to know about this case?
Alex Kueng: What’s been done is done, and I just hope that at the very least, people in the future can keep an open mind and not let instances like this happen.
Just use my case as an example, as, you know—to not jump the gun, not kneejerk, not fall to this race bait, the social media, to the media, and let them get away with what they do. Because if things like this keep happening, no one anywhere is going to have any sense of justice left.
Liz Collin: Everyone talks about Officer Derek Chauvin (who is White), being involved in this George Floyd incident for eight or nine minutes. But there’s you, a Black police officer who is with George Floyd for much longer, practically 18 minutes for the entire amount of time, from the moment he was handcuffed until you closed the ambulance door. Why do you think that people have been allowed to think that (didn’t happen) for so long?
Alex Kueng: You know, that’s a good question. And again, I think it just goes to the narrative. I remember that some of the first articles that were published and made public have the headline “four white officers.” You know, just like you said, the fact that I am Black and that, another colleague of mine, Tou, is Asian, so really half the attending officers were in the minority.
And I think that that was something that they just didn’t want to admit. Specifically, my race, because again, it goes very counterintuitive to the way their narrative goes. I think we’ve seen that even with some recent events in other states where you’ve had Black officers initiating some sort of use of force on Black criminals, and it doesn’t get near the attention or backlash from the public as when it’s a White versus Black issue.
Liz Collin (speaking to AK Kamara): How early on were you aware that that something more perhaps was going on here?
AK Kamara: I mean, I was already skeptical just from the beginning because Black Lives Matter had already established themselves that they don’t care about facts. They’re just always trying to push their own political narrative, an agenda which is rooted in Marxism, race consciousness. And so I already, when they picked up, I was like, ‘Oh, there’s something that just doesn’t seem right.’
But I will say that because of the cellphone camera footage, I was swept up of like, ‘Oh, this doesn’t look good.’ But in the pit of my stomach, I just knew that there had to be more. So I was just employing this rule: Let’s just wait for some evidence to come out before we start pulling out the pitchforks.
Liz Collin: Did we ever see that evidence?
AK Kamara: Not until the trial. And then even then, as we come to find out, yeah, we didn’t even see the majority of the good evidence that would have been exculpatory, at least in my opinion, of being able to prove that officer Derek Chauvin or former officer Derek Chauvin, was not guilty at all of the charges that he was found guilty of.
Liz Collin: What do you think of Black Lives Matter?
AK Kamara: I think they’re an awful organization. I think that they truly, fundamentally want to change this nation. Like that was their goal, right? To really incite a Marxist revolution—that’s what they wanted to have happen. And they were able to gain so much traction because of incidents such as George Floyd and incidents going back even further, Michael Brown and even Trayvon Martin.
And then they start putting all these other narratives into it, right?
Talking about how many black men or women are killed that are unarmed by police officers and then creating this racial tension and then even going back all the way to like 1619 Project and talking about how law enforcement in this country was established with the lie of slave catchers, like all of this narrative is meant to build a race consciousness so they can fundamentally change our entire justice system.
They want to abolish police. They want to abolish prisons. They do not believe that the current structure that exists should stand. They’re radical revolutionaries. That’s Black Lives Matter. I knew that from the beginning.
What I didn’t think would happen is that you would start to see mainstream acceptance by Democrats all across this country, and also by all of the establishment media, which I believe already has a leftist bias.
Liz Collin (speaking to Joni Kueng, the mother of Alex Kueng): Last time we spoke, you had some pretty strong words for Gov. Tim Walz, the attorney general, Keith Ellison, and now former Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, Mayor Jacob Frey. Is there anything you’d want to say to them now?
Joni Kueng: It is really hard to remain dignified when you think about them—or think about what you might want to say to them. I can’t maintain my dignity
So I just have solace, I guess, in the fact that, you know, their careers are going to end, you know, the sun will set and I picture them with their heads hung low, walking into the sunset in their pants with the really saggy crotch. See, the dignity—I just can’t.
Liz Collin: Chief Rondo has a book—on the back of it, it says Chief Rondo’s decisive and courageous actions led to one of the greatest social justice victories in our time.
Joni Kueng: I don’t know if any one person I have ever met has been more delusional than that. I mean, you just have to live in the city, in this world, in this country, to look around and see the devastation that happened and the fallout from all of that. How do you tell your own praises? I don’t understand how you can be that delusional.
But the whole thing is just a tragedy. You know, Mr. Floyd is dead. Mr. Chauvin and Mr. Thao are still in prison. He’s (Alex) coming back to a city that still has this huge boil of deceit covering it, what you’ve started to lance and let some of those infectious lies out. But until all of that is exposed, and acknowledged, there’s just no healing happening.
And I think the only way he really got through all this was through all the support that’s been mustered—the prayers, the thoughts, the cards, the letters that he shared with me.
He’s come out and he’s going to be looking for a purpose, a new purpose in life.
You know, and it’s me who has been changed. And my purpose as a mother has, I feel like, has been taken away from me because I feel like I’ve failed. You know, you prepare your children for a world where they can survive and know what’s coming. And when something like this hits you, I couldn’t prepare him for the betrayal that he had. And so what’s my purpose going to be now?
But we have faith—and hope.
