Minneapolis (AFP) – Derek Chauvin, the former police officer convicted Tuesday of murdering George Floyd, had a record of using excessive force before the unarmed Black man died under his knee in a crime prosecutors branded a “shocking abuse of authority.” Chauvin, described by colleagues as rigid and silent, knelt on the 46-year-old Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes on a Minneapolis street on May 25 last year, despite the dying man’s pleas and those of shocked passers-by who filmed the tragedy. The killing sent reverberations throughout the United States and the world, and launched a re…