Before his encounter with Floyd, Chauvin had a record that raises serious questions as to why he had been allowed to remain on the police force for nearly 20 years.
Even if the Minneapolis Police Department had fired these officers for their past conduct they would have likely been reinstated because of arbitration and qualified immunity, which has been used to shield individual police officers accused of using excessive force from facing lawsuits from victims and their families, and paying financial settlements, according to a Reuters investigation.
U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, a conservative independent from Michigan, won support from a Minneapolis Democrat for his “Ending Qualified Immunity Act,” which would allow civil lawsuits against police, a recourse that the Supreme Court has all but done away with.
“The brutal killing of George Floyd is merely the latest in a long line of incidents of egregious police misconduct,” Amash told colleagues in a letter.
Urge Congress to limit officers’ qualified immunity against lawsuits so that police officers can be held accountable for using excessive force and other serious misconduct.
