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Guilty: Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin being taken into police custody
“I would not call today’s verdict ‘justice’ … because justice implies true restoration. But it is accountability, which is the first step towards justice."
That was Minnesota Attorney Gen. Keith Ellison after the prosecution he headed resulted in the historic conviction of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd.
The challenge of justice in public safety is underscored by how difficult it can be just to achieve basic accountability. Police reforms are politically hard to enact. The right thinks they go too far; the left thinks they don’t go far enough. As a result, policymakers have to spend twice the political capital to get them done. This is a big reason why policies that seem like no-brainers aren’t in place everywhere and still require such a fight in city after city.
Throughout my years as an elected official, I grappled with policing in every seat I occupied—Minneapolis city council member, committee chair, and ultimately mayor. I fought for civilian oversight, investments in community-led public safety strategies, and to end such damaging labor practices as putting law-enforcement managers and rank-and-file officers together in the same union.
Some of the changes I worked to put in place have been derided by detractors as insufficient band-aids to a systemic problem. I don’t disagree. No single reform or new policy will get us what we say we want until we shift the purpose of law enforcement in America away from the reasons it was established—protecting the property and comfort of white people—and shift it toward a role that it should play in an enlarged vision of true community safety.
They didn’t save George Floyd’s life. They didn’t have the intended impact on Derek Chauvin’s behavior. But they did help convict Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd.
But individual reforms are nonetheless crucial as we build toward a more holistic vision of community safety. They create space for a new ending and an imagination for a new conversation about who we are as a people.
Some reforms also make it possible to convict police officers who murder people.
When I put body-worn cameras in my mayoral budget, something I promised to do as a candidate, it was controversial. The Police Federation excoriated them as a too-intrusive abomination. More conservative council members (a relative term in the entirely-Democrat-except-for-the-Green Minneapolis City Council) wanted to significantly truncate the ways data could be collected and used, and to limit how much we could spend on them. More left-leaning council members were afraid that supporting body-worn cameras would signal that they didn’t understand that more needed to be done than a “mere” accountability tool. Activists and community members criticized them for being too intrusive into the personal lives of city residents. They contended that I saw the cameras as a panacea for all policing.
Body-worn camera footage was a crucial piece of Derek Chauvin’s prosecution.
Police Chief Janeé Harteau and I pushed through other policy changes, too. On our watch, the Minneapolis Police Department Sanctity of Life Policy said everyone should get home safe at the end of the day—not just cops. For the first time, Chief Harteau required every officer to physically sign off on any change in the Policies and Procedures Manual. We were met with skepticism. Officers and union leadership rolled their eyes at what they saw as a watering down of law enforcement authority. Some advocates said support for these policy changes was proof of unwillingness to do something truly meaningful about police violence.
But in Derek Chauvin’s case, the fact that there was hard evidence he had violated department policy—that he had signed his name to documents stating that he understood those policies—proved that he knowingly violated the Minneapolis Police Department’s standards and expectations. That standard was a key element of the prosecution’s case.
As mayor, my administration also funded implicit bias training, procedural justice training, crisis intervention training, and enhanced de-escalation training for police officers. Several city council members fought our efforts, saying it was too expensive and that the money should go toward hiring new officers. Other council members sided with community activists and said while the training was fine as far as it went, it didn't do enough and the investment might be better made elsewhere. Those trainings did move forward, and their timeline was accelerated after Minneapolis police officers killed Jamar Clark in 2015.
Derek Chauvin took those trainings in 2016 and 2018, and his actions last May violated what he had been taught there. This was another important piece in Attorney Gen. Ellison’s legal case, illustrating that Chauvin had been shown and taught differently from how he behaved.
One reform we tried to pass multiple times: an early intervention system that uses data to sense when an officer is struggling or likely to be involved in misconduct. The Police Federation stopped the efforts every time. I believe it could have led to the department intervening in Chauvin’s behavior long before he had his knee on George Floyd’s neck.
Reforms matter, even if they don’t solve the fundamental problem.
In the end, it was the combination of community protest, the brave testimony and video from bystanders, medical testimony, a remarkable prosecution by Attorney Gen. Ellison, testimony by Chief Medaria Arradondo and other MPD officers, and this mix of police accountability reforms—fought and criticized every step of the way by interests on the right and the left—that resulted in Derek Chauvin being convicted for his crimes.
They didn’t save George Floyd’s life. They didn’t have the intended impact on Derek Chauvin’s behavior. But they did help convict Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd.
As debates flow about law enforcement and reforms, I invite all who want safe communities to help create the political space for police accountability measures. They are not sufficient unto themselves to create true community safety. That work is in our hands, alongside the work for accountability. We must pursue policy victories while not mistaking them as the final achievement of our vision.
As Attorney Gen. Ellison put it that day, “And now the cause of justice is in your hands. And when I say your hands, I mean the hands of the people of the United States.”
