First came the shock in May when police officer Derek Chauvin was charged after the killing of George Floyd. Then came the shock this week when Chauvin was convicted. This is not what usually happens after a police killing in the US.
Of the 7,666 police officers who killed people in the US between 2013 and 2019, just 25 were convicted. These statistics, which come from Mapping Police Violence, use media reports and define a police killing as “a case where a person dies as a result of being shot, beaten, restrained, intentionally hit by a police vehicle, pepper sprayed, tasered, or otherwise harmed by police officers, whether on-duty or off-duty.” The data on police convictions has not yet been released for 2020.
In another 74 of those cases, officers were charged but not convicted. But in the vast majority of cases (99%), officers were not charged with any crime whatsoever. Scroll down to see what that looks like.
The dataset, compiled by Samuel Sinyangwe, DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie also provides further detail on those 25 cases where officers did face a conviction for killing someone. Their sentences were as follows:
Unknown sentence = 4 police officers
Only probation = 3
3 months in jail = 1
1 year in jail, 3 years suspended = 1
1 year in prison = 1
18 months in prison = 1
2.5 years in prison = 1
4 years in prison = 1
5 years in prison = 1
6 years in prison = 1
16 years in prison = 1
20 years in prison = 1
30 years in prison = 2
40 years in prison = 1
50 years in prison = 1
life in prison = 3
life in prison without parole, plus 16 years = 1
After receiving a guilty verdict on all three counts for the killing of George Floyd, Chauvin will face sentencing in the next eight weeks and is being held in a segregated prison housing unit until then.
