A good three years after the violent killing of African American George Floyd during a police operation in the USA, one of the police officers involved at the time was again sentenced to several years in prison.
A judge in the US state of Minnesota sentenced ex-cop Tou Thao to five years in prison. He had helped keep observers at bay at the time and was found guilty of aiding and abetting manslaughter in May. Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020 in a brutal police operation in Minneapolis triggered demonstrations against racism and police violence in the United States.
Thao – who had already been sentenced to 3.5 years at the federal level – was the last of the four police officers involved to receive his state verdict. “I was hoping for a little more remorse, regret, acknowledgment of some responsibility,” judge Peter A. Cahill was quoted as saying by regional broadcaster Fox 9 on Monday. Thao had protested his innocence during the trial. The prison sentences that Thao has been sentenced to must be served at the same time.
Videos documented how the officers pushed the unarmed Floyd to the ground at the time. White police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for a good nine minutes while Floyd begged him to breathe and eventually lost consciousness. His colleagues Thao, Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane did not intervene despite Chauvin’s actions.
Chauvin was sentenced to 22 years and six months in prison for second-degree murder by a Minneapolis court. A federal court had sentenced him to another prison term. Kueng and Lane are also serving prison sentences of several years.
