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Derek Chauvin in handcuffs after being convicted of murdering George Floyd.
Even after former police officer Derek Chauvin received a twenty-two-and-one-half-year prison sentence for killing George Floyd last year, Minnesotans still can’t get it together regarding ending police brutality, let alone the much more progressive push for abolition.
Chauvin is only the second police officer in Minnesota’s history to be convicted of committing a murder while on duty. The first, former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor, is currently serving a twelve-year sentence for killing an unarmed woman, Justine Damond (née Ruszczyk), while on duty in 2017.
While Chauvin brought this on himself, and in no way should serve as the poster child in the movement to end solitary confinement, the prospect of relegating any human being to this kind of isolation is not a good one.
Chauvin’s prison sentence for the murder of George Floyd has been viewed by many, including by President Joe Biden, as punishment, not justice.
So when can we expect justice?
George Floyd’s children will have to grow up and live their lives without him. Whatever comfort they may get from knowing their father has indeed changed the world likely won’t keep the waves of their private grief at bay.
Chauvin, who has yet to publicly offer any real statement or contrition regarding his murder of Floyd, will most likely be in prison for at least the next fifteen years. Many observers expect the bulk of his days to be spent in solitary confinement, for his own safety.
Chauvin clearly tortured Floyd by pressing his knee on his neck for more than nine excruciating minutes while blankly ignoring pleas from his victim and bystanders. But having to spend years in solitary confinement is also considered a form of torture.
While Chauvin brought this on himself, and in no way should serve as the poster child in the movement to end solitary confinement, the prospect of relegating any human being to this kind of isolation is not a good one.
Again, this is not justice. It is punishment.
It may feel good, or be enough for some, to send Chauvin and Noor (who are among a very tiny group of police officers who’ve been convicted) to prison, but it seems pretty clear that this approach will not end police brutality.
Where should change come from, then?
In Minnesota, it’s looking less and less likely that it will come from current police reform efforts in the state legislature, at least in terms of any legislation that goes beyond moderate gestures.
Here’s where things stand today, although the situation in Minnesota is very fluid. On June 26, Democratic Governor Tim Walz reached a budget deal with legislators regarding public safety. It included some hoped-for police reform measures, such as further regulation around the use of no-knock warrants. But it does not include additional funds to go toward “prohibiting police from making traffic stops for certain infractions,” according to the Star Tribune.
These issues are not just theoretical, of course.
In April, just days before Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter shot and killed twenty-one-year-old Daunte Wright after pulling him over for having expired license plates. She resigned from the force and has been charged with second-degree manslaughter.
Potter is white, and Wright was Black. This matters tremendously, since it fits a longstanding pattern of pretextual traffic stops being used by the police to crack down on—and sometimes kill—people of color at disproportionately high rates.
Facts such as this seem obvious by now, don’t they? A quick Google search yields loads of reliable data showing that people of color are pulled over more often than white people, at a rate of nearly two to one, according to one recent study from New York University.
Using a hyper-local lens, evidence shows Black drivers in Minneapolis are five times as likely to be pulled over while driving as their white counterparts.
These facts are not universally accepted, however. Republican state legislator Bill Ingebrigtsen of rural Alexandria, Minnesota, recently disputed the idea that Black drivers are targeted by police. During a state senate debate over the public safety bill, he said he’s “tired of hearing that, because you’re Black, you’re getting pulled over,” according to a report by Ricardo Lopez of the Minnesota Reformer.
Ingebrigtsen then insisted that he didn’t operate that way during his years as a county sheriff; instead, he finds any mention of racial disparities in traffic stops to be nothing more than a way to “divide us.”
On June 28, a group of Democratic legislators known as the People of Color and Indigenous Caucus vowed to reject the public safety budget deal and instead push for amendments to it, insisting that it doesn’t go far enough to reform policing.
Governor Walz has also pledged to use federal COVID-19 relief funds to push for greater accountability from law enforcement officers. Still, it isn’t clear how deeper and more existential questions regarding law enforcement will be addressed.
Until they are, justice will likely remain far from our collective view.