On Friday, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd. But let’s not kid ourselves. No matter how many years Chauvin ends up spending in prison, it will do nothing to stem the tide of police violence in communities of color across the United States.
No matter how many years Chauvin ends up spending in prison, it will do nothing to stem the tide of police violence in communities of color across the United States.
To be sure, some measure of significant individual accountability for Chauvin is required here. His fateful decision to plunge his knee into Floyd’s neck and leave it there for an excruciating 9 minutes and 29 seconds, while Floyd pleaded for his life, cannot be met with indifference.
Certainly, for many of us, it was heartening to witness the criminal legal system finally hold a white police officer accountable in a court of law for taking the life of a Black man. This was no small feat. Given the failure of so many other jurisdictions to hold officers accountable for abhorrent conduct, the collective sigh of relief within the Black community was almost palpable.
As such, and particularly in light of the historic public outcry, widespread uprisings and national reckoning (of sorts) around race and racial justice following Floyd’s tragic death, any sentence that didn’t include significant prison time would likely have been met with understandable outrage.
But as my colleagues Vincent Southerland and Steven Demarest pointed out in a THINK essay in the immediate aftermath of Chauvin’s conviction, the unique circumstances surrounding this case (namely the fact that the entire sordid episode was caught on camera, in broad daylight, without obstruction or interruption) made a successful prosecution much more likely than many of the other police shootings that have received national attention in recent years, most of which have resulted in either an acquittal or a decision not to indict the officer at all.
Indeed, it is pure folly to believe that we can rely on the mechanisms of the criminal legal system to eradicate police violence. The irrationality of this country’s addiction to incarceration as the go-to solution does not suddenly become rational just because the defendant in this case happens to be a police officer. A lengthy sentence may provide some measure of closure for Floyd's family and the community, which is important, but it almost certainly won’t lessen the number of police killings that will likely occur as we head into the summer months.
One need look no further than the prosecutors in the Chauvin case to see that his experience with the criminal legal system won’t change the behavior of the police as a whole. The government attorneys who made the case against Chauvin went out of their way to make clear that this case was about an instance of grave misconduct by one bad apple and decidedly not about policing in Minneapolis more generally, let alone the culture of policing nationwide.
After all, in a rare twist, even other Minneapolis police officials, including Chief Medaria Arradondo, identified Chauvin’s actions as being beyond the pale and not a reflection of the training and guidance they receive from the department.
Then, in his closing argument, lead prosecutor Steve Schleicher reminded the jury how much “we” trust the police, and noted how difficult it must be for them “to imagine a police officer doing something like this.” Incredibly, he added, “We believe the police are going to respond to our call for help. We believe they’re going to listen to us.”
And just in case there was any doubt about the larger implications of this case (or lack thereof) from the state’s perspective,
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