In light of Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict, criminal justice students at Quinnipiac University hope this landmark conviction means more police officers will be held accountable for their actions.
“I was thinking of it on the side of, throughout history, they haven’t been tried as guilty for the things that they do,” said Leilani Girard-Isaac, a third year criminal justice and psychology double-major. “But at the same time, we made such a big deal about Floyd’s death that I thought at the very best, something had to come out of it.”
Girard-Isaac hoped Chauvin’s verdict would be different from past cases of police officers who had been arrested for manslaughter.
A study published by Bowling Green State University found that out of 104 police officers who had been arrested between 2005 and 2019, 35 of were convicted of “a crime resulting from the on-duty shooting.”
Out of that 35, four were convicted of murder.
Conversely, Jessica Gibree, a third year in the 3+3 law program at Quinnipiac with a minor in criminal justice, said that while she was expecting the guilty verdict, she was still hesitant to get her hopes up.
“However, part of me was nervous that he would get away with it because we have seen that happen in so many other cases,” she said.
An example of one of the cases Gibree is alluding to is the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who police officers shot to death on March 13, 2020. Police officers Brett Hankinson, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove used a battering ram to enter Taylor’s apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, a little after midnight, when she was in bed with her partner.
Despite the national protests that Taylor’s death ignited, none of the three officers were charged for Taylor’s death.
And Girard-Isaac doesn’t think Chauvin was charged and convicted just for Floyd’s murder, but for what his death meant for the Black Lives Matter movement.
“It wasn’t a, ‘He’s actually guilty, we really need to put him behind bars kind of thing,’” she said. “It was more of a, ‘People are really upset about this and we need to fix society to have people calm down so that it doesn’t turn into a bigger issue.’”
She’s referencing the fact that his death refuelled a national and international rally for Black lives.
“Since the death of Mr. Floyd, protests have erupted in at least 140 cities across the United States, and the National Guard has been activated in at least 21 states,” The New York Times reported.
Due to the massive public attention paid to Floyd’s murder, supporters of Black Lives Matter across the world hoped Chauvin would be held responsible for his actions.
Gibree said she felt relieved when she heard about the guilty verdict, adding it meant that “the criminal justice system did what it was supposed to in this case.”
However, Girard-Isaac mentioned that this verdict doesn’t feel like it’s enough for racial justice.
“It’s the first time something like this has happened and I think it’s a really good thing for Floyd’s family and the people that were very closely involved,” she said. “I’m glad it happened and it also just feels like something’s still missing from the whole system.”
One gap that Girard-Isaac noted is the systemic racial bias that exists in policing.
Dean Knox, a professor of operations, information and decisions from the Wharton School in University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview published in Knowledge at Wharton, “That burden of police killings falls on Black men, especially. (Rutgers University professor) Frank Edwards and co-authors have shown that this group is two and a half times more likely to be killed by police than white men.”
As a result, police reform is now one potential solution to the racial bias that leads police officers to kill Black men at disproportionate rates. Girard-Isaac cited the lack of exposure to different groups of people and backgrounds as being potentially responsible.
“You can become a police officer after you graduate high school. I don’t think that’s a good idea. Fresh out of high school, that mentality is not mature,” she said. “College is a whole different experience… When you come here, you’re exposed to so many different people, so many different cultures and so many different mindsets. I think it’s important that people get exposed to that before they decide to jump into a career where they can put someone’s life on the line.”
Police reform can come in many different shapes. Bias training that tackles systemic racism at the individual level is just one way to achieve that goal. And that route is one that’s supported by most Americans.
1,113 U.S. adults were surveyed by the Hidden Common Ground Initiative in 2020. 87% want police to be required to receive training on de-escalation tactics. And 82% want police to go through a required training on “how to be less racially biased.”
Another hole that Girard-Isaac sees in the criminal justice system is the lack of fair treatment of Black people in criminal cases.
“It’s so disproportionate, the amount of people of color that are in jail just because of the smallest thing they did as a kid or the smallest crimes,” she said. “Whereas, when somebody has killed someone, we had to make it a big deal just to get a guilty verdict.”
Out of the 104 charged police officers mentioned from Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database, 43.28% of non-Black police officers were convicted, while 46.15% of Black officers were convicted.
For Girard-Isaac, one route to bridging this gap lies in investing money in Black communities.
“More of that money should go towards education,” she said. “… so that people aren’t put into positions where they’re in an impoverished community and they end up resorting to crime because of their environment.”
Gibree echoed this sentiment, adding Chauvin’s guilty verdict is a pit-stop on the road to achieving racial justice, rather than the destination.
“I would like to see more prosecution of police who make decisions based on race,” she said. “Less prosecution of minorities who commit minor crimes, and more resources allocated to fixing issues, such as poverty and lack of education, that disproportionately affect minorities.”
As for the future, Girard-Isaac and Gibree both expect Chauvin’s conviction to lead to increased accountability of violence perpetrated by white police officers.
“I would hope that it would mean that we hold police accountable more for their actions, because everybody should be held accountable for their actions,” Girard-Isaac said
Gibree hopes that this conviction helps police officers realize the weight of their momentary decisions.
“And police will feel a heavier burden when they make decisions that puts a person’s life at risk,” said Gibree.
Others at Quinnipiac are also now discussing what this conviction means for racial justice and what Chauvin’s trial entails for the future.
Quinnipiac’s Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Don Sawyer is hosting “To Understand and to Achieve Change.” With notable panelists such as Judge Gary J. White of the Connecticut Superior Court and Marilyn J. Ford, professor of law at Quinnipiac, the panel is going to “analyze the Chauvin case and the spate of recent violence throughout our nation.”
The event is going to take place on Zoom on Monday, April 26 at 7 p.m. Registration for the Zoom is here.
