Police chiefs hail Chauvin verdict as a key step to healing
From APNEWS.COM
Not long after a jury convicted former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin of killing George Floyd, police chiefs across the U. S. started speaking up. And it wasn’t to defend the police.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said convicting Chauvin on Tuesday showed “police officers are not above the law.” Charmaine McGuffey, the sheriff in Cincinnati, said it was a “necessary step” in healing a nation torn apart by police violence. Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo encouraged Americans to breathe “a collective sigh of relief.”
Law enforcement leaders said Chauvin’s conviction was a step toward restoring trust in the criminal justice system and repairing relations between police and the communities they serve. It was a major departure from years past, when even the highest levels would close rank around an officer following an on-duty killing.
But police leaders and activists alike cautioned that a single case will not end systemic racism or stamp out excessive force in departments nationwide.
“The American justice system has not always served all of her people well, and the death of George Floyd is a shocking example of where we can fail each other,” said Madison, Wisconsin, Police Chief Shon Barnes, who is Black. “As an officer of the law, I believe that today justice has prevailed. We hear you. This moment matters.”
At Chauvin’s trial, jurors saw video from bystanders and police body-worn cameras and heard witnesses describe how the white officer pinned his knee to Floyd’s neck as the Black man cried out, “I can’t breathe.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo testified against Chauvin, breaking the “blue wall of silence” that has long shrouded accountability around police wrongdoing. Arradondo told jurors that Chauvin’s conduct violated department policy, went against training and “is certainly not part of our ethics or our values.”
Some large unions for rank-and-file officers also supported the verdict, but it’s unclear whether that sentiment was universal when the general practice is to defend officers immediately.
Floyd’s death last May gave rise to nightly protests across the U. S. and demands from activists to dismantle or radically rethink the role of police in society.
Since then, some police departments have instituted changes — such as banning chokeholds or setting timelines for the release of body-cameravideo of fatal police interactions — and many state legislatures are debating police reform bills.
Activists dedicated to systemic changes to American policing have criticized those steps as far too limited. But Chauvin’s conviction gave cautious hope to many who have watched officers face no criminal consequences for other killings of Black Americans, from the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City to last year’s suffocation of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York.
Activist Isaac Wallner said Chauvin’s conviction suggested the country may be starting to take Black communities’ cries of police abuse seriously. But he said a single verdict won’t make him feel safe in his hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin, where no officers have been charged in last year’s shooting of Jacob Blake.
“Until that day happens when police are afraid to abuse their badge, I’ll continue to be afraid of the police,” Wallner told The Associated Press. “As of right now, they’re not afraid because too many of them have gotten off.”
Law enforcement leaders in cities large and small said the verdict was just a first step.
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