MINNEAPOLIS: The US Justice Department announced on Wednesday an investigation into the Minneapolis police, a day after a white former officer was convicted of murdering George Floyd, signalling the Biden administration’s intention to use federal powers to clean up systemic police abuse.
Tuesday’s verdict raised cautious hopes in the Black community of a historic turning point in US justice, but the police killing of another African American cast a shadow over prospects for change less than 24 hours after Derek Chauvin was led from a Minneapolis courtroom in handcuffs.
The ex-officer — who knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes — faces up to 40 years in prison after being found guilty of all charges over the death of the unarmed man.
The crime was recorded by a bystander whose video shocked the world, triggering mass protests across the United States and beyond, while also prompting a national reckoning on racial injustice and police brutality.
“But only with the passage of time will we know if the guilty verdict in the trial... is the start of something that will truly change America and the experience of Black Americans’’, Floyd’s brother Philonise Floyd, the family’s most outspoken member, wrote in a Washington Post opinion column. “It’s up to all of us to build on this moment.”
On Wednesday US Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a civil investigation to determine whether the Minneapolis Police Department systematically uses excessive force and “engages in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing’’, including during legal protests. — AFP
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