The killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis last month prompted protests around the world after footage of his desperate final moments circulated online.

British actor, Maxine Peake, made the following claim in an interview published by the Independent newspaper on Thursday:

“The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”

The claim has attracted criticism from many commentators.

The Labour leader Keir Starmer sacked a member of his shadow cabinet, Rebecca Long-Bailey for sharing the article, which Mr Starmer said “contained an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory”. Ms Long-Bailey said afterwards: “In no way was my retweet an intention to endorse every part of that article.”

Ms Peake later tweeted: “I feel it’s important for me to clarify that, when talking to The Independent, I was inaccurate in my assumption of American Police training & its sources. I find racism & antisemitism abhorrent & I in no way wished, nor intended, to add fodder to any views of the contrary.”

We’ve been looking into her original claim. Here’s what we’ve found.

The source

It seems Ms Peake’s original claim is based on an article in the Morning Star from 1 June, which states: “At least 100 Minnesota police officers attended a 2012 conference hosted by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the second time such an event had been held.”

The article has been shared over 40,000 times on Facebook, according to analytics provided by the website Crowdtangle.

This description appears to be supported by a report from Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) at the time of the event. By the MPR account, the conference took place in Minneapolis and was “put on by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the FBI and Minnetonka police”. (Minnetonka is the neighbouring city to Minneapolis).

Which techniques were taught?

The Morning Star piece alleges that those attending the 2012 conference “learned the violent techniques used by Israeli forces as they terrorise the occupied Palestinian territories under the guise of security operations.”

The article does not explicitly claim that Israeli forces taught American police to kneel on a person’s neck at the conference.

The only link to this tactic in the story is made by an activist, Neta Golan, who told the paper: “When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee as he cried for help and other cops watched, I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique of leaning in on our chest and necks when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.”

Ms Golan is quoted as saying: “it is clear that they [Israel] share these methods when they train police forces abroad in ‘crowd control’ in the US and other countries including Sudan and Brazil.” The information in square brackets is from the Morning Star’s copy.

The article mentions a 2016 report by Amnesty which lists US police forces that have “all traveled to Israel for training” and “thousands of others” that “have received training from Israeli officials here in the U.S.”

After yesterday’s controversy involving Maxine Peake and Rebecca Long-Bailey, Amnesty International told the New Statesman: “the precise nature of the training offered to US police forces by Israeli officials is not something we’ve documented”.

They added: “Allegations that US police were taught tactics of ‘neck kneeling’ by Israeli secret services is not something we’ve ever reported”.

Beyond the speculation of one activist, there is no information in the Morning Star article that would support the claim that the specific practice of kneeling on a person’s neck was taught to US police by Israeli forces.

Micky Rosenfield, the national spokesman for Israeli police, tweeted on 9 June: “There is no procedure that allows an officer of the Israel police dept to carry out an arrest by placing a knee on the neck of a suspect.”

And after this article was first published, the Israeli Embassy in London told FactCheck: “Any attempt to create a link between what took place in Minnesota with Israel is baseless and misguided.

“The said 2012 event in the Israeli Consulate was on counter-terrorism training that involved information sharing and explosive disarmament training. No arrest tactics were taught as part of the event. “

Minneapolis Police permitted ‘neck restraint’ with a leg before Israeli conference

The conference hosted by the Israeli consulate for US police officers took place in July 2012. We’ve seen evidence that “neck restraints” involving an officer’s leg were permitted by Minneapolis Police in 2010, and perhaps even as early as 2002.

Archived versions of the Minneapolis Police Department “Use of Force Policy” show that “neck restraints” and “choke holds” were written into the code in October 2002.

You can see the dates on which the definitions of those terms were updated listed at the top in brackets in the excerpt below. The earliest is 16 October 2002.

Note that officers were permitted to use “an arm or leg” as part of a neck restraint in the definition authorised on 1 October 2010. It’s possible that this was also included in earlier definitions, including from 2002, but we have been unable to find records of them.

In any case, it’s clear that using a leg during a neck restraint was permitted by Minneapolis Police before the July 2012 conference hosted by the Israeli consulate. So even if the “neck kneel” was included in that conference (and we’ve seen no evidence that it was), it would not have been new information to the Minneapolis Police.

According to a 2002 newsletter from an organisation called Communities Against Police Brutality, Minneapolis Police used what they apparently described as a “legal neck restraint” on Christopher Burns, who died on 1 December that year. It’s not clear whether the neck restraint involved an officer’s knee, but the newsletter says officers “kneeled on [Mr Burns’] back” in the incident.

And Minneapolis is not the only US city where “neck kneeling” has a long history.

A 1995 report on the death of Jonny Gammage in Pittsburgh describes how an officer “stood and knelt on the back of Mr. Gammage’s neck”.

In 2002, Santiago Villanueva died after being restrained by four police officers in Bloomfield, New Jersey. In 2004, Amnesty USA reported the testimony of Nina Paulino, a friend of Mr Villanueva, at the AIUSA National Hearings on Racial Profiling in New York City. Ms Paulino is quoted saying that one of the officers “put a knee on his neck”.

Then there was the 2005 case of Donald Lewis. In its summary of the “background facts and issues”, the US Supreme Court said an officer “placed his knee on Lewis’ upper back and neck”.

A 2009 report from Amnesty on the death of Oscar Grant in the San Francisco Bay Area describes how “one police officer pressed his knee onto the back of Oscar’s neck” before another shot him. The San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time that in footage of the incident, an officer is “seen kneeling on Grant’s head”.

Were Floyd officers at the 2012 Israeli conference?

The Morning Star piece also notes that: “It is unclear whether any of the officers involved in the incident in which Mr Floyd was killed attended the conference.”

We have not been able to verify this either.

While we know that Derek Chauvin – the officer charged with second-degree murder over George Floyd’s death – was employed by Minneapolis Police in 2012, we haven’t seen any evidence he was at the conference.

Indeed, we don’t know whether any or all of those at the event came from the Minneapolis Police Department, or whether members of other Minnesota police forces took part.

Even if all of the 100 conference-goers were from the Minneapolis Police Department, on the basis of statistics alone, it’s unlikely he was one of them: at the time of the event, there were 820 officers on the force, according to their 2013 Annual Report.

What about the three other officers charged in connection with George Floyd’s death?

Two (J Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane) had only joined the force as cadets in 2019, so could not have attended.

The fourth officer, Tou Thao, was laid off from the force in 2009 and re-hired sometime during 2012. We don’t know whether he was employed by the Minneapolis Police Department at the time of the conference.

‘Secret services’?

In the Independent interview, Ms Peake says the training was conducted by “Israeli secret services”.

According to Minnesota Public Radio, the 2012 conference was led by “top-notch professionals from the Israeli police”, including a “police chief” and a “bomb tech specialist”. There is no mention of “secret services” in their report.

Another account of the event – this time from a 2014 book by Ali Abunimah, who is described in the book blurb as “the most prominent Palestinian critic of Israel living in the United States” – also suggests it was Israeli police, the not security services, who led the conference.

He writes: “The Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest in Chicago, for example, sponsored two visits by Israeli police officials in 2012 to address hundreds of US law enforcement officials in St Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Indianapolis”.

Mr Abunimah cites a press release titled “Israel Police Workshop Detailing Counter-terrorism Took Place in the Midwest in July” from the Israeli Consulate as the source for this description. Again, there is no reference to Israeli secret services having led the event.

American police have training sessions with many countries

As the Morning Star article notes, it has been reported before that members of some US police forces have been trained by Israeli law enforcement.

Indeed, archived webpages from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America think tank (JINSA) document a number of conferences and training sessions for US police and federal agents run by Israeli officials as part of the Law Enforcement Exchange Program.

But Israeli forces are not unique in offering training sessions to American officers.

In 2015, a delegation of US law enforcement officials travelled to Scotland for classes on nonviolent policing.

The Altoona Police Department in Wisconsin has an exchange programme with German forces. It’s part of the wider “STAR” scheme, which was founded in 1985 between West German and US officers.

Meanwhile, the International Police Association Exchange Program matches American police with their counterparts in “many European countries, and elsewhere”, which the IPA describes as “a great learning experience for not only the foreign officer, but also their host agency, [in the US] too”.

FactCheck verdict

British actor Maxine Peake claimed yesterday: “The tactics used by the police in America, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, that was learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services.”

She seemed to be referring to a report in the Morning Star newspaper that 100 officers from Minnesota (where George Floyd died) attended a conference hosted by the Israeli consulate in 2012. The story has been shared over 40,000 times on Facebook.

The Morning Star piece does not explicitly claim that Israeli forces taught American police to kneel on a person’s neck. The only link to this tactic in the article is made by an activist who says she saw Israeli forces use the technique in the West Bank from 2006 onwards, and speculates that they taught the technique to other countries, including the US.

But Minneapolis Police Department rules permitted “neck restraints” that involved an officer’s leg in 2010 – some two years before the Israeli consulate conference. It is possible that the same rules applied as early as 2002. So even if the technique was included in the Israeli conference (and we’ve seen no evidence that it was), it would not have been new information to the Minneapolis Police.

Following yesterday’s controversy, Amnesty International issued a statement saying: “Allegations that US police were taught tactics of ‘neck kneeling’ by Israeli secret services is not something we’ve ever reported”.

FactCheck has not been able to verify whether any of the officers charged in connection with George Floyd’s death attended the 2012 conference.

FactCheck has been unable to verify the claim that “Israeli secret services” carried out training at the conference. Two separate reports from the time of the conference say that it was led by senior Israeli police officers. Neither mentions the intelligence agencies.

It is true that some US police forces have been trained by Israeli law enforcement officials over the last two decades. But we should remember that other countries, including the UK and Germany, have also run training and exchange schemes with American officers.

Ms Peake later tweeted: “I feel it’s important for me to clarify that, when talking to The Independent, I was inaccurate in my assumption of American Police training & its sources. I find racism & antisemitism abhorrent & I in no way wished, nor intended, to add fodder to any views of the contrary.”