Floyd verdict buoys police reform efforts
Advocates of criminal justice reform in Miami-Dade see momentum in the conviction of ex-Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.
The George Floyd verdict will not set any legal precedent in South Florida — ex-Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in a different state with different laws.
But for criminal justice reform advocates in South Florida, Chauvin’s conviction nevertheless carries powerful symbolic weight, a boost of momentum for years-long campaigns to root out rogue cops, improve law enforcement training and rethink laws and policies that unfairly target Blacks and minorities.
Donald Jones, a University of Miami law professor, said he believes the case broadened support for
reform efforts that “reflect a seismic shift in public opinion because of the shocks of injustice we’ve seen for 20, 30 years building up.”
“The baseline line has changed,” Jones said of the verdict. “Now, we can talk about maybe there shouldn’t be more arrests for marijuana possession, or maybe we should stop doing traffic stops simply because their windshield is too dark.”
There are significant political hurdles to statewide reform, however. Last summer’s protests over Floyd’s death, despite being mostly peaceful, led to a backlash among Republican lawmakers in Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis last week signed an “anti-riot” bill that supporters say is designed to protect businesses and public buildings and monuments from damage but critics say is aimed at squelching free speech and protests — particularly from the Black Lives Matter movement.
Still, even as protests erupted across the country and in South Florida last summer, the two largest police department were already ordering some key changes in how officers deal with civilians on the street. Miami-Dade, most notably, banned all chokehold techniques outside of life-threatening encounters.
Both the city of Miami and Miami-Dade police say they were ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing police reforms but agree that the conviction of Chauvin — who faces up to 40 years in prison — will serve to reinforce policies that have cut back on use of force, while emphasizing deescalation techniques.
“We’re constantly monitoring what goes on across the entire country with policing,” said Miami-Dade Police Lt. Carlos
Rosario, a department spokesman. “Last June, we were already addressing a lot of issues that were brought up. We’re always ahead in our training and always ahead in our policies.”
Floyd’s death last May also put a spotlight on a criminal justice system in which Blacks and other minorities are killed by police and jailed at disproportionate rates. Many of those arrests, like Floyd’s, are often for minor crimes.
Floyd, 46, was handcuffed and lying face down as Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, a chilling exercise of brutality captured by bystanders on video. Three other officers stood by and watched as Floyd begged for his life, saying “I can’t breathe.” A local medical examiner ruled his death a homicide. He wound up dead after being accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store.
Long before the Floyd case, how the justice system treats minorities in Florida had been under intense scrutiny.
One high-profile case dates back to 2012, when George Zimmerman, a white and Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer in Seminole County, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a Black 16-year-old from Miami Gardens. Zimmerman called 911 on Trayvon, who was visiting his father in Seminole and was walking home from buying candy at a nearby market.
Police initially declined to arrest Zimmerman, citing Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, although he was later arrested on a murder charge amid largescale protests and a national reckoning over race and racial profiling. In 2013, he was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges after a three-week trial, a decision that also sparked national protests.
But in the ensuing years, as more videos and cases of Black men shot and killed by police went viral, incremental changes have happened — but nowhere near the sweeping overhaul sought by many of the criminal justice system’s critics.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2014 assumed control over most police shooting investigations, to add a layer of independence from the agencies that used to investigate its own officers who opened fire.
REFORM AGREEMENT
In Miami, after a string of fatal police shootings of Black men in the mid-2000s, the city entered into a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2016 that mandated a host of reforms, like de-escalation training and a duty to intervene, some of which were already in place. The federal oversight officially ended in March.
Among the reforms Miami police say they have instituted are a physical fitness requirement, a duty to intervene if an officer believes a partner is using excessive force and implicit bias training, which was in place prior to the consent decree. “We not only watch what’s going on. We watch what fellow officers are doing,” said Miami Assistant Chief Armando Aguilar Jr. “We intervene not only when there is misconduct, but when an officer is about to engage.”
Aguilar said the average annual number of shootings and use-of-force incidents has gone down substantially in the decade since Miami began implementing the reforms. “A decade ago compared to now — it’s like you’re looking at two different police departments,” he said.
But the Floyd case did have some immediate effects on police tactics. Last June, less than two weeks after Floyd protests began, Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez said he spoke with experts and community leaders and decided to ban neck restraints at the largest police department in the Southeastern United States.
At about the same time, the agency released a three-page letter to the community listing reforms that were already in place and that would immediately go into effect. Among them: de-escalation training and warnings before firing a weapon. The department also said officers must exhaust all other alternatives before firing a weapon.
Miami-Dade police have also moved more swiftly with discipline, at least in one high-profile case: As protests were happening across the country in July, a Miami-Dade police officer was seen striking an angry woman during a confrontation at Miami International Airport. He was immediately ordered fired — even though prosecutors have yet to make a decision on whether to charge him.
Stephen Hunter Johnson, a lawyer and chairman of Miami-Dade’s Black Affairs Advisory Committee, praised local departments for changing policies on shooting at moving cars, and de-emphasizing minor traffic stops. Still, he said, he wants to see more transparency when it comes to releasing information on complaints on uses of force, and the release of body-camera footage in police shooting cases.
“The lack of transparency leads to mistrust,” Johnson said on Wednesday, adding: “The verdict will cause us to re-examine how we are policing people, especially if we’re over-policing Black people and, whether due to perceived biases, implicit or explicit, force is more likely to be used.”
On the prosecution side, longtime Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle has been heavily criticized by police reform advocates and Black Lives Matter leaders for never having charged a police officer in a fatal on-duty shooting. She’s argued that few state prosecutors have pursued such cases because of the wide leeway afforded cops under Florida law.
But in recent years, as more bystander and bodycam videos have captured confrontations between police and citizens across the nation, Miami-Dade prosecutors have become more aggressive about charging cops for rough arrests.
In 2019, Miami-Dade prosecutors also convicted then-North Miami police officer Jonathon Aledda of a misdemeanor count of culpable negligence for shooting at an autistic man holding a silver toy truck — another case that became national news because of jarring bystander video. Aledda admitted he mistook the shiny object for a weapon. His bullets missed the autistic man but struck the man’s Black therapist, who was lying on the ground with his hands in the air.
But convicting officers is never an easy sell — jurors often give officers the benefit of the doubt, especially when they have made split-second decisions in dangerous moments, legal experts say. Aledda himself was acquitted of two felonies. In the past few years, three officers from Miami-Dade County have been acquitted for slapping or kicking a handcuffed suspect.
After winning re-election last year, Fernandez Rundle also pushed a bill that called for more expansive police training. The proposal gained some traction and bipartisan support in the Legislature but has fizzled in the last week of the session. A separate House bill negotiated with the Florida Legislative Black Caucus that also addresses police training issues could be passed this session.
After the Floyd verdict, Fernandez Rundle, a Democrat, issued a statement supporting ongoing reform efforts: “As a nation, we now can begin healing, building trust, transforming policing and improving police-community relations across this nation. We now can also renew our focus on vigorously promoting racial equality generally.”
NO LEGAL PRECEDENT
Ultimately, while the Floyd case sets no legal precedent, it may influence future courtroom decisions in other ways.
Rod Vereen, a former prosecutor and defense attorney who was the first Black candidate for Miami-Dade State Attorney in 2012, said he believes the state will still have a tough time convicting cops. But he said that public perceptions in light of the George Floyd verdict might better the odds.
“It could have that effect. If you present a good case, before maybe it was a 70-30 chance. Now, it’s a 50-50 chance,” Vereen said. “The [George Floyd] video opened a lot of eyes of whites who have not had to live the kind of life of communities of color targeted by the police.”
Alex Saiz, the legal director of the Florida
Justice Center, the state’s only legal aid organization that handles criminal cases, said he hopes that the Floyd verdict will eventually push for the creation of an independent civilian body “with teeth” that — outside of the prosecutors’ office — can independently review police misconduct. In the wake of the Floyd verdict, MiamiDade revived a civilian oversight panel, but it has limited subpoena power and has yet to meet.
“What the George Floyd verdict means is not that people celebrating are anti-police,” Saiz said. “They are just pro-accountability.”