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| - Justin Teigen's lifeless body was found in a dumpster in 2009 -- a death that his fiancee says was one of many police killings covered up by authorities in the US state of Minnesota. "They framed it as accidental, but the evidence was that they beat him to death and threw him in the garbage," Toshira Garraway told AFP. For Garraway, the death of George Floyd last year and of Daunte Wright on Sunday are just two recent examples in a long series of alleged "racist murders" carried out by the Minnesota police. "These new cases are not isolated," said Garraway, founder of the Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence (FSFAPV) action group. "I fought the police story over Justin's death, and they followed me, harassed me, and waited outside my house. "It is scary, this is a police force guilty of racism, and it is not just the police, but the forensic scientists, the county attorneys and all levels." Minnesota law enforcement has come under fierce scrutiny since Floyd died when an officer knelt on his neck for several minutes in an incident captured in sickening phone footage. Derek Chauvin, who has since been sacked from the police, is currently on trial for Floyd's murder in a Minneapolis courtroom in a case widely seen as a test of police immunity. With a verdict possible within weeks, tensions have been ratcheted up by the fatal shooting of Wright, 20, at a traffic stop in a suburb of the city on Sunday -- by an officer who appears to have mistaken her Taser for her pistol. Garraway was attending a march for families with relatives killed by police when news of Wright's death broke and she hurried to the scene. Teigen, her late fiance, died 12 years ago in the adjoining city of St Paul after he was pulled over when driving. Police said he fled on foot and hid in a recycling bin, and the medical examiner later determined he was crushed by a recycling truck. "They lie, they edit videotape, they do anything," said Garraway, who has a 14-year-old son with Teigen. On Tuesday she spoke at a press conference alongside relatives of George Floyd and Daunte Wright. Also at the event were relatives of Jamar Clark, shot dead by police in 2015, and of Kobe Dimock-Heisler, 21, who was shot six times in 2019 after he brandished a knife in the same suburb of Brooklyn Center where Wright died. No criminal charges were filed against the two police officers over death of Dimock-Heisler, who had autism, as they were judged to have a reasonable fear that lives were in danger. "The only thing that escalated the situation was the police," his mother Amity told AFP. "None of these cops live in Brooklyn Center. If they did, they wouldn't draw a gun and shoot a man like my son. "Chauvin's trial just shows that the city and government only do something when they are forced to. "It is the whole system -- allowing a disenfranchised section of society to be looked down on. It is the 'school-to-prison pipeline.' "It is hard to know that my son's killers won't go to court. We had to fight just to see the bodycam footage, and they only released it after George Floyd was killed." Jaffort Smith's mother Matilda accuses the police of shooting her son while he was complying with their orders when accused of using a gun against a girl in 2016. "They shot him up so bad, and left him behind a house with his pants down," she said. "The Chauvin trial offers a glimmer of hope, even if it seems George Floyd is the one actually on trial. "The jury must convict. The video of that is proof of what we have said all along happens." Campaigners point out that only one officer in Minnesota's history has been convicted of a killing while on duty, and he was a Somali American and the victim was a white woman. The American Civil Liberties Union said Wright's death was one of over 260 police killings already in 2021. Garraway, who works with about 25 families affected by alleged police killings, says there are hundreds of suspicious deaths over the last 20 years in the state. "We are just hoping that the Chauvin case is the one time in history that things can change," she said. "The world is watching and this is one case they can't cover up. "We have strong supporters and strong attorneys. "Our families have already been fighting for years, but they did not listen to us and they did not make the changes. That is why George Floyd and Daunte Wright are gone today." bgs/st
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