Legal protection against prosecution for police is a controversial topic in the United States.
Saturday, June 6, 2020
UPDATimes - It is estimated that the police kill around 1,200 people each year in the United States, but around 99% of the cases that occur, no one is charged.
Amid public pressure, demonstrations, and looting following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minnesota police, this time there was an indictment.
One of the police, Derek Chauvin, faced several charges, including second-degree murder. He pressed Floyd's neck with his knee for almost nine minutes, before Floyd breathed his last in the city of Minneapolis on May 25.
Three other policemen at the scene of the crime were charged with assisting and encouraging crime. The four policemen face a maximum prison sentence of 40 years.
The demonstrators hope that Floyd's death will push for a massive change in how the law places police suspected of killing when on duty, because this case is an exception to existing regulations.
But in accordance with the laws of the United States (US), the police get special legal protection from criminal and civil charges.
Criminal charges are 'very rare'
George Floyd's death sparked a violent demonstration in the United States.
The Mapping Police Violence project recorded 7,666 police killings that were known between 2013 and 2019 - or about 92% of the killings, activists said.
Only 99 cases reached the indictment stage or only around 1.3%, and only 25 of them reached the stage of guilty verdict.
Clark Neily, vice president of Criminal Justice at Cato Institute, Washington, told the BBC that it was "very rare" for prosecutors to file criminal charges with members of the police, as happened in the Floyd case.
He said, the prosecution and the police were both law enforcers, they needed to work side by side. The prosecutor relied on the police to reveal the evidence and testimony in the trial.
With this close relationship "criminal prosecution is not a mechanism for ideal accountability."
In addition, the use of excessive force has become part of the work of the police and in many cases the action is legal - for example, to defend oneself or so as not to endanger others.
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