‘It is too early to know whether this verdict is a flash in the pan or a sea change’

By Christy Lopez

Christy Lopez is a professor from practice at Georgetown Law.

One aspect of the trial that was encouraging was the willingness of so many law enforcement officials to state unequivocally that Derek Chauvin’s use of force was unlawful and unnecessary. That was likely quite significant in the jury’s reaching the verdict it did, and it underscores the importance of law enforcement officers policing their own — not only to ensure that an officer is held accountable for wrongdoing after the fact, but also to prevent harm from occurring in the first place.

Still, it is too early to know whether this verdict is a flash in the pan or a sea change. Even if it signals a new willingness for prosecutors to bring charges against officers, and for juries to convict, holding an individual officer criminally liable does not fundamentally change the trajectory of policing. This verdict is significant and important. But it shouldn’t cause us to lose sight of the fact that Chauvin was more a symptom of policing’s current pathologies than a cause.

We need to move beyond conceptualizing criminal prosecutions as the solution to police misconduct. For one thing, prosecutions of police officers generally occur only after someone has been terribly harmed or killed. We need to do much more to prevent policing harm. This requires vastly different recruiting, training and accountability measures, but it also requires fundamentally rethinking the policing function. We have given police an impossible job — one that underprotects communities even as it needlessly provokes conflict. Unsurprisingly, it’s not going particularly well. No amount of after-the-fact prosecutions — even successful ones — is going to change that.

‘I’m left to wonder if justice in this country will always be synonymous with a prison cell’

By Reginald Dwayne Betts

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer and memoirist. He is also the director of the Million Book Project, an initiative out of Yale Law School, where he is a Ph.D. candidate.

A friend of mine was once sentenced to life in prison for murder. My friend, then a 17-year old Black boy, had murdered another Black boy. Two decades later, I worked as a lawyer struggling to convince a parole board to free him. But I knew the family of the dead Black boy might believe freedom for the trigger man is an injustice. That for them, only life in a cell amounted to accountability. My view: Two decades in prison was enough.

I shouldn’t think back to my friend when I think of the Derek Chauvin verdict. But Chauvin’s eyes remind me of others I’ve seen struck with the sudden knowledge that decades in a prison cell might await them. And so, when I ask myself where does society go from here, I really have no answers. Chauvin is another man going to prison for destroying a life and ruining his own. The verdict gives me some relief, I suppose — but on most days, I think about prison cells, what they can and can’t do. The men I know condemned to die in prison for violence look more like me than Chauvin. The men I want to free from prison all look more like me than Chauvin.

If justice is a 40-year prison sentence for Chauvin, I’m left to wonder if justice in this country will always be synonymous with a prison cell. That’s a troubling thought. Because prison cells have never made this country safer. I won’t make this verdict an occasion for me to pretend that the criminal justice system is just and the rates of incarceration in this country don’t profoundly worry me. The verdict makes me want to imagine a different United States, one where the undercurrent of so many lives isn’t violence. Because I know when death comes, we all tend to want prison. And, sadly, maybe that’s all we can want, even if at night prisons make none of us sleep any easier.

‘This case is an outlier’

By Philip M. Stinson

Philip M. Stinson is a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University and the author of Criminology Explains Police Violence.

The criminal justice system worked with the jurors returning guilty verdicts on all three counts. The verdict, however, likely means little in terms of the long arc of holding police in America accountable for their actions. This case is an outlier. Most instances of police brutality are not captured on video, and most do not receive the level of media attention that the Derek Chauvin case has garnered.

I study police crime and police behaviors. Roughly the same number of people are killed by police officers every year in this country, and roughly the same number of police officers are charged with murder or manslaughter each year. Less than 2 percent of the on-duty police officers who kill someone are ever charged with a crime and held accountable in the criminal courts. While justice was served with the guilty verdicts against Chauvin, my fear is that it will not lead to meaningful reforms in policing.

There are more than 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies across the country employing more than 700,000 sworn officers. The Chauvin trial will do little to change the culture of policing at many of those law enforcement agencies. That is because many police officers exhibit fear of Black men and Black boys. Until we deal with this core value of the police subculture, it will be difficult to change police behaviors.

‘There is still so much work to be done’

By Jennifer Cobbina

Jennifer Cobbina is an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University and the author of Hands Up, Don’t Shoot: Why the Protests in Ferguson and Baltimore Matter, and How They Changed America.

Today we have seen accountability for one police officer’s actions. We have witnessed some form of accountability take place, which was necessary. However, we should not be mistaken that justice has taken place. Justice would have been George Floyd not being murdered. Every day that Black people worry whether they will be the next George Floyd is another day without justice. The one guilty verdict does not mean that the criminal legal system values Black lives. It took overwhelming evidence with unimaginable footage and witnesses to bring this case to trial and gain convictions.

Collectively, so many people were holding their breath waiting for the verdict. The fact that so many of us knew what the verdict should be but remained uncertain of what it actually would be speaks volumes about the state of our nation. Police are rarely held accountable. Hopefully this case will send a signal to every official within the criminal legal system that the tide is shifting.

There is still so much work to be done, which begins with acknowledging that structural racism is entrenched in policing, and we must continue to fight for systemic change to policing in America. We need to stop pretext traffic stops, stop reliance on fines and fees, end qualified immunity, restructure civilian payouts for police misconduct, limit the power of police unions and defund the police.

‘Prosecution of rogue cops has a role to play, but it isn’t enough’

By Walter Olson

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.

Police are not above the law. And yet it’s hard to get juries to convict an officer. Social respect for the job often sways the outcome toward acquittal where the facts are ambiguous. They weren’t ambiguous here, thanks to the video. “I feared for my safety” often works as a defense. Derek Chauvin couldn’t make use of it. Prosecutors and judges, no matter their integrity, thread a narrow path because they have to work with cops every day.

The eyes of the world were fixed on this courtroom. Now the question is what’s going to happen after the eyes of the world move on.

Prosecution of rogue cops has a role to play, but it isn’t enough. Around much of the country, attempts to separate bad officers from the force are hobbled by union power, reluctance to testify against other officers, and barriers to discipline like the “Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights” laws that prevail in more than a dozen states, including Minnesota.

What about civil lawsuits by surviving families against cities or individual officers? In all but the most egregious cases, these tend to be restricted by doctrines of “qualified immunity,” which often shelter both police and other government officials from being held liable for harms they commit under color of law. Those are judge-made rules, not found in the Constitution, and it’s quite right that they’re being rethought across the country.

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