Reforms like the ones recently passed in Maryland and New Mexico offer a better long-term fix than the conviction of one police officer.
by Steven Greenhut
Reason.com
The nation has finally learned what it takes to remove a bad officer from a police force and provide some modicum of justice in a police-abuse case. We need only capture on video an officer slowly snuffing out a man’s life, have that video go viral, endure some of the most far-reaching protests and riots in modern history and, then, after nearly a year of soul-searching and debate, wait for a jury to render a verdict.
Polls suggest that most Americans are relieved that the jury found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of all charges (second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter) in the death of George Floyd. The causes of that incident, however, took place long before the awful scene we watched unfold last May.