Maybe they can make it go to the police officer's expected state of mind. In other words, given a nonviolent offense, knowing what they knew at the time of the interaction, and all of the rest of the evolution of the interaction, it is objectively reasonable that any other officer(s) would restrain Floyd? To establish this, they need to get to the bottom of what the officers knew about Floyd, what they knew about the interaction, what exactly happened prior to the video that looks so horrible. Also playing a part would be what the officers knew about Floyd from previous interactions and maybe even conversations with him.
We think we know some of this. I seem to remember that the security guard told the police that Floyd was on drugs or something. That would set the initial frame of mind baseline for the rest of the interaction. So, even though the initial offense was a nonviolent relatively benign criminal act, the determination that he was intoxicated on something and his behavior being non-compliant probably was of more import in the officers' minds than the counterfeit check.