While many states and municipalities are waiting to determine what will occur with The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that aims to absolve qualified immunity for law enforcement, police department insurance policies and individual officer liability insurance may be the key regardless. Cities and counties need to think through a plan that does not include using funding from general tax revenue to pay for misconduct settlements. Municipalities need to restructure civilian payouts for police misconduct. Link law enforcement certification to malpractice insurance This is a huge problem and needs to change. In this regard, the same process of reporting and retaliation that operates in neighborhoods plagued with violent crime also operates in many of our police departments. Instead, they are further exposed to retaliation. People who provide information to law enforcement are rarely given immediate protection for that information. This is the same process that happens on streets plagued with violent crime. The blue wall of silence exists because there are consequences to breaching it. The blue wall of silence does not simply exist because officers are loyal to the badge and each other. If there is a state or federal program for officers who report misconduct, officers may be more likely to intervene and report misconduct. The two reporting officers just happened to be Black. In retaliation, some officers were told not to back up the officers who reported the excessive force. This recently occurred in Prince George’s County, Maryland (one of the 30 largest police departments in the country) when two officers reported that another officer used excessive force. If it stays local, officers will be less likely to report or more likely to be targeted for reporting. This requires state legislatures creating an independent reporting and investigation program at the state level. I call it GAPP (Good Apples Protection program for law enforcement). Officers who report misconduct need protection from retaliation. Moreover, simply having duty to intervene laws is not enough. States need to have duty to intervene laws that protect police officers who report bad behavior. Implement state-level duty to report programs Focusing on duty to intervene legislation, malpractice insurance, and positive police outcomes are central. So, how should police departments ensure that officers like Chauvin do not brutalize our communities? Overall, accountability must be increased to ensure that these incidents become nonexistent rather than a regular occurrence. For all the good officers protecting and serving their communities, there are more Chauvins than there should be. How could Chauvin get away with this brutality for so long? Why didn’t anyone intervene or stop him? Why wasn’t he reprimanded or even fired? Chauvin was not simply a bad apple, but a bad apple that helped rotten the barrel and poison good apples that could have been, like the two early-career officers who watched him kill Floyd and participated in it. Interestingly, none of Chauvin’s what ifs included what clearly is the most important consideration: what if Chauvin pulled his knee off of Floyd’s neck when he stated he could not breathe? The what ifs focused on whether the officer should not have come in to work that day or not responded to the call. These facts may explain why Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s defense attorney, rambled off a series of “what ifs” during the sentence hearing that Chauvin allegedly stated over the past year. These incidents make up a small portion of the over 20 complaints that Chauvin received during his 19-year law enforcement career. In 2017, Chauvin kneeled on the back of a 14-year-old Black boy for 17 minutes. Of the people involved in these incidents, two were Black, one was Latino, one was American Indian, and two others were of an unknown race. Since 2015, Chauvin is on record for kneeling on people’s necks and/or putting them in chokeholds at least six times. A person could watch a major league baseball game and a basketball playoff game and come to the realization that police probably killed a person at some point during that time span.Ĭhauvin’s actions were not isolated. During the less than two week trial, police in the United States killed over 60 people. The city of Minneapolis paid out $27 million to the Floyd family for his wrongful death days before the start of the Chauvin trial in March. While some may view this chapter of police brutality closed, others know Chauvin is the tip of the iceberg regarding changes needed to improve law enforcement. Chauvin will probably serve two-thirds or 15 years of this sentence. Twitter being convicted of second and third-degree murder as well as manslaughter for the killing of George Floyd, Chauvin was sentenced to 270 months (22 years and 6 months).
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