The last former Minneapolis police officer convicted in state court for his role in the killing of George Floyd was sentenced Monday to a 57-month sentence — the equivalent of 4 years and 9 months. Floyd’s killing touched off protests worldwide and forced a national reckoning of police brutality and racism.
Tou Thao had testified that he merely served as a “human traffic cone” when he held back bystanders who gathered as former Officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes while the Black man pleaded for his life on May 25, 2020. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.”
Thao had rejected a plea bargain on the state charge, saying “it would be lying” to plead guilty when he didn’t think he was in the wrong. He instead agreed to let a judge decide the case based on evidence from Chauvin’s 2021 murder trial and the federal civil rights trial in 2022 of Thao and former Officers Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng.
In his 177-page ruling, Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill found Thao guilty in May of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. Cahill said Thao’s actions separated Chauvin and two other former officers from the crowd, including an emergency medical technician, allowing his colleagues to continue restraining Floyd and preventing bystanders from providing medical aid. He wrote: “There is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Thao’s actions were objectively unreasonable from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, when viewed under the totality of the circumstances … Thao’s actions were even more unreasonable in light of the fact that he was under a duty to intervene to stop the other officers’ excessive use of force and was trained to render medical aid.”
The sentence Judge Cahill handed down Monday will run concurrently with Thao’s 3 1/2-year sentence on his separate conviction on a federal civil rights charge. His state sentence was more than the 4 years recommended under Minnesota state guidelines.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/minneapolis-officer-faces-sentencing-state-charge-role-george-102063365
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