ST. PAUL: Three former Minneapolis police officers were found guilty by a federal jury on Thursday of depriving George Floyd of his civil rights by failing to give aid to the handcuffed Black man pinned beneath a colleague’s knee.

The jury also found that the conduct of officers Tou Thao, 36; J. Alexander Kueng, 28; and Thomas Lane, 38, during the arrest on May 25, 2020, caused Floyd’s death, a finding that can affect the severity of their sentence.

It is a rare instance of police officers being held criminally responsible for a colleague’s excessive force. All three men were convicted of denying Floyd’s constitutional right to medical care while in police custody.

Thao and Kueng were also convicted on a charge of denying Floyd’s right to not face excessive force by failing to stop their colleague Derek Chauvin from kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. Chauvin was convicted last year in a state court of Floyd’s murder.

Thao, Kueng and Lane will remain free on bail pending their sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled. Prosecutors have not yet said what sentence they will request, but the men may face years in prison.

“This is just accountability,” Philonise Floyd told reporters after the verdict was read. “It could never be justice because I can never get my brother back.”

The verdict marked a second victory this week for prosecutors in the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, coming just two days after a jury in Georgia found three white men guilty of federal hate crimes in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man who was gunned down while running through a mostly white neighbourhood.

“That’s historic for our country, because oftentimes officers kill Black and brown men and women, and we get little to no consequences,” said Brandon Williams, George Floyd’s nephew. “A lot of times we don’t even get charges, let alone convictions.”

Federal prosecutors argued in the US District Court in St. Paul that the men knew from their training and from “basic human decency” that they had a duty to help Floyd as he begged for his life before falling limp beneath Chauvin’s knee.

Floyd’s killing sparked protests in cities around the world against police brutality and racism.

It also led lawmakers to propose such measures as restricting chokeholds, banning “no-knock warrants,” and legislating to curtail the US Supreme Court doctrine known “qualified immunity” that limits lawsuits over police use of excessive force.

Those proposals were included in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed in the Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives last year.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2022