The federal charges require prosecutors to prove the ex-officers willfully deprived George Floyd of his constitutional rights: they knew what they were doing was wrong and still went ahead.
A federal trial against three former Minneapolis police officers seeks to hold them responsible for not stopping George Floyd’s murder — and perhaps strike a blow against long-standing police culture that breeds reluctance to rein in fellow officers.
“This sends a real message to counterbalance that very strong cultural set of influences in policing that often prevent an officer from stepping forward and reporting or stopping misconduct,” said Jonathan Smith, former chief of the department division that oversees police civil rights inquiries. Police departments and local prosecutors have their own means to punish officers who don’t intervene. But high-profile examples show how risky it is, both personally and professionally, for officers who do intervene or who cooperate with investigations of fellow officers.
And in Buffalo, New York, Officer Cariol Horne was fired in 2008 after an arbitration process ruled that she had put other officers at risk when she stopped a fellow officer whose arm was around a handcuffed suspect’s neck. Since mid-2020, 21 of the country’s 100 largest police departments adopted policies on officers’ duty to intervene and lawmakers in 12 states have approved similar laws, according to the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing.
“Police know there’s no limit to what the federal government can do,” Giacalone said. “I definitely think now the risk of a federal charge is in the back of the mind.”
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