Former Minneapolis officer sentenced to 3.5 years over Floyd's death

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
27 Jul 2022 23:03

A United States federal judge only sentenced one of the policemen that helped with George Floyd's murder to 3.5 years in prison.

A protest in the United States demanding justice for police brutality victim George Floyd

A US federal judge sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao to 3.5 years in prison for violating George Floyd's civil rights during the fatal arrest that took Floyd's life in May 2020, CBS News reported on Wednesday.

The report noted that Thao will also serve two years of supervised release after serving his sentence.

Earlier on Wednesday, a federal judge sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Alexander Kueng to three years in prison for the same charges: violating Floyd's civil rights. Kueng will also serve two years of supervised release upon the completion of his three-year prison sentence, the report said.

Kueng and Thao were found guilty of two counts of violating Floyd's civil rights during his fatal arrest. Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes and constricted his breathing, ultimately killing him. He was accompanied by three other policemen.

Floyd's death was filmed by a bystander and sparked months of protests in the United States against racial injustice and police brutality.

The three men in question whom the judge accused Chauvin of destroying are police officers Thomas Lane, 38, Alexander Keung, 28, and Tou Thao, 36.

Chauvin was convicted in a state court on murder and manslaughter related to Floyd's death, which led to widespread protests all over the United States and the world as a whole. He was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.

The former policeman will be serving the state and federal sentences concurrently in federal prison.

The video footage which went viral showed Keung and Lane helping Chauvin hold Floyd down - Thao, meanwhile, kept bystanders away. Chauvin was Keung and Lane's field training officer.

The policemen were charged with expressing "deliberate indifference [to Floyd's] serious medical needs" during the arrest that happened in May 2020, when Derek Chauvin kept kneeling on Floyd's neck while the latter couldn't breathe and soon died as a result.

Through his plea, Chauvin admitted for the first time after two years since the killing that he kept his knee on Floyd's neck, subsequently resulting in his death, keeping it on there even after the victim became unresponsive. The former police officer admitted he willfully deprived Floyd of his right to be free from unreasonable seizure, including unreasonable force by a police officer.

What led to the widespread nationwide and global anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests was not just one act of police officers murdering a Black person via unreasonable force, as police brutality has long been rampant, especially in the United States, and Floyd's murder acted as the main catalyzer for the Black Lives Matter protests.