Chauvin sentence bucks the trend for US police killings

A judge’s 22.5-year sentence for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis cop convicted of murdering George Floyd, is not entirely unprecedented but it is rare. 

In the past 15 years, 11 police personnel have been convicted in the US of murder for crimes committed while on duty, according to an analysis by Bowling Green State University professor Philip Stinson. On average, those men received nearly 22 years’ jail time, though sentences ranged from just less than seven years to life imprisonment.

More than 1,000 people were killed by on-duty cops each year since 2013, an annual rate that has held steady, according to Mapping Police Violence, which tracks nationwide police killings.

In this period, eight cops were convicted of murder, Stinson’s analysis shows.

“In most of these cases where there’s use of deadly force the officer is exonerated,” Stinson said.

Speaking outside the courthouse, attorney Ben Crump, who achieved national prominence representing victims of police violence, said: “Today represents an opportunity to be a turning point in America. This is the longest sentence that a police officer has been sentenced to in the history of the state of Minnesota.”

President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House that the sentence “seems to be appropriate”.

Charges Chauvin was convicted on carry a recommended sentence of 10-15 years, but his abuse of his position as an officer and the cruelty of his actions led to the upward revision, according to judge Peter Cahill’s sentencing order.

A group of bipartisan senators is negotiating legislation that would overhaul policing practices in the US. A sticking point is how to create greater accountability for police who engage in excessive force. 

Still, Stinson said that Chauvin’s sentencing would probably not usher in a new era of police accountability. The Chauvin case exploded, in part, because of the horrific bystander video, which remain uncommon, Stinson said.

More often, police killings are not treated as crimes. Evidence is not collected from the scenes and prosecutors rely heavily on officer accounts of an incident, Stinson said. 

“Their on-duty violent actions just aren’t treated as criminal,” he said. “The real changes have to be around the culture of policing.” 

Bloomberg News. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com