Chauvin trial offers nation relief but shows how far we still have to go – Las Vegas Sun

Thursday, April 22, 2021 | 2 a.m.

The conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd provided a moments respite in a nation whose justice system has repeatedly failed to hold law enforcement officers accountable for abuses of authority against people of color.

But while the verdict offered a victory to build on in the quest for social justice, the exceptional circumstances that led to Chauvins conviction demonstrated how much more work needs to be done.

The jury arrived at the right outcome, but only after what President Joe Biden correctly identified as a unique and extraordinary convergence of factors in the trial.

This was a case involving massive amounts of evidence of a murder committed by an officer with clearly criminal intent. His actions were so obviously malicious and inappropriate that members of his own department broke the blue line to condemn them. This was about as well-documented and open-and-shut instance of intentional killing by a police officer as can be imagined. As the president of the nations largest police union said in reaction to the verdict, As we have said from the beginning, what Derek Chauvin did that day was not policing, it was murder.

And thats what it took to get a guilty verdict, leaving uncertainty about whether justice will be served in other cases with less overwhelming evidence.

The conviction let America issue a sigh of relief, but only because the alternative would have been beyond contemplation. An acquittal would have revealed our justice system as being fundamentally broken.

Still, the verdict was a step forward for justice, with the potential to further inspire Americans to press for enduring, systemic change.

That partly involves addressing police reforms from a legislative basis, by not only requiring departments to meet higher standards on use of force, training, hiring and screening, etc., but giving them the resources they need to make these improvements.

It also involves supporting leaders who recognize the imperative for progress on equality something that Southern Nevadans have been particularly wise about. In recent years, weve sent conscientious lawmakers to Carson City and Washington, D.C., where they have supported numerous equal-justice measures. Those include a sweeping package of judicial reforms at the state level in 2019 to undo policies from the War on Drugs era that resulted in mass incarceration of minorities in Nevada and across the nation. This year, lawmakers are considering several similar bills, including one that would reform police use-of-force policies and one that would decriminalize minor traffic offenses, which often lead to incarceration for low-income individuals because of their inability to pay fines.

Those are just a few examples of areas where Nevada is headed in the right direction.

Last summer, we saw another sign of progress when thousands of Las Vegas residents of all ages and ethnicities joined Black Lives Matter demonstrators in communities around the world to demand change. For those individuals and all like them, the Chauvin verdict offers a breath of wind in the sails of this movement.

Think of the joy we felt when those three guilty verdicts were read. This is the joy we could feel every day in a country where everyone can feel equally protected under the law and equally valued in society.

Unfortunately, were a long way from reaching that point. Systemic racism still plagues America, as we see it not only in the way minority communities are policed but in the wealth gap between whites and people of color, in gross discrepancies in health outcomes among minorities compared with whites, in relatively poor quality of public schools that serve communities of color, and in far too many other ways.

But the Chauvin verdict showed that the ideal of American justice remains attainable as long as we continue to seek it and the path to equality remains open as long as were willing to walk it.

Lets keep moving.

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Chauvin trial offers nation relief but shows how far we still have to go - Las Vegas Sun