NORTHAMPTON — In the wake of George Floyd’s murder last May, Jasmine Sinclair organized a Black Trans Lives Matter protest against racism and police brutality that drew more than 4,000 people to downtown Northampton.
On Tuesday, she was sitting outside Big Y supermarket after grocery shopping when her aunt texted her the news: former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had been found guilty on all three counts related to Floyd’s death.
“I’m surprised the prosecutors put away one of their own,” Sinclair said on Wednesday. “I’m not that impressed, but I’m glad. There needs to be more work done.”
If the verdict brought some Black people peace, Sinclair said, “then I’m very glad they’ve received peace from this. But Black people shouldn’t have to die for peace and change to happen, if only for a minute.”
A jury found Chauvin guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter on Tuesday. Across the Valley, activists, along with elected and law enforcement officials, said that while the verdict held Chauvin accountable, there’s more work ahead when it comes to racism and police violence.
“My immediate reaction is that you know, the triple guilty verdict is not justice,” Josey Rosales, a member of Northampton’s Policing Review Commission, said.
“It’s accountability,” Rosales added. “It’s a good step in the right direction in terms of accountability … Justice would be George Floyd still being alive.”
“I also think prison is inherently inhumane and doesn’t lend itself to rehabilitation, but I definitely like the accountability aspect at least,” Rosales said.
“For myself, this is a moment to pause and breathe, but not stop,” Dan Cannity, co-chair of the Northampton Policing Review Commission, wrote in an email. “It took a year of international outcry to get here, and it all hinged on a 17-year-old girl with the presence of mind to film an execution.
“And all the guilty verdicts won’t bring that father back home to his child and family. It can’t undo the trauma of watching a man be killed. And it doesn’t bring back any of the others who have been killed by police and who didn’t even get a trial, like Breonna Taylor.”
Sinclair noted that “it will happen again … it already has.”
In fact, minutes before the Chauvin verdict was announced, Ma’Khia Bryant, a Black teenager who swung a knife at two people, was shot by police in Columbus, Ohio, The Associated Press reported.
In a statement Wednesday, Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan described the prosecution of Chauvin’s crime as fair and just.
“The return of guilty verdicts on all three counts was a credit to the career prosecutors who built and presented a case that showed overwhelming evidence of guilt,” Sullivan said. “It was a credit to the victim/witness advocates who worked closely with the family of George Floyd over the past year and with bystanders who unwittingly became key witnesses after doing the right thing by drawing attention to the circumstances of the death of Mr. Floyd.”
Sullivan said the jury’s verdict “rightly sends a strong message that nobody is above the law,” and that “We must work toward transforming and reimagining public safety.”
The Chauvin verdict surprised Vanessa Martínez, a Holyoke resident who served on the mayor’s policing advisory board in her city before it was paused.
“It gave me my breath back for a moment until I realized that this does not return George Floyd’s life, nor does it fix us as a divided nation,” Martinez wrote in an email.
“This verdict does not absolve us from knowing how much work we still have to do. This verdict provides hope and a reminder that the work we are doing in our communities to bring about racial justice in policing, schools, health and more is essential to the betterment of all people.”
Ashwin Ravikumar, an Amherst resident and organizer with Northampton Abolition Now, echoed others in saying the verdict didn’t bring about justice.
“No verdict in a trial like this can really deliver anything that looks like justice,” he said. “Justice means building a society that takes care of everyone at the expense of no one.”
Asked if he was surprised by the verdict, Ravikumar said, “We have reached a point where the system recognizing even once its own violence is more surprising to us than the violence of the system itself, and this is an indictment of a cruel system.”
In contrast to some activists, Easthampton Police Chief Robert Alberti said that “justice was served” with the Chauvin verdict.
“Every good police officer despises a bad police officer,” Alberti said. “They tarnish our noble profession.”
Alberti said that he hopes that Easthampton can “come together and heal” and that he is looking to forge a constructive path forward in the city. He also noted the value of data, which he said can help departments to root out bias and racism and examine possible use-of-force issues.
He said the recent passage of state police reform legislation is “very comprehensive” and a work in progress.
“There’s a lot of work to be done to meet that bill,” he said. “And it’s already started.”
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Worcester, said that justice involves confronting systemic racism and that “everybody needs to examine their role in ending systemic racism.”
“The officer who murdered George Floyd was held accountable,” McGovern said. “That’s not the same thing as justice. Justice requires a hell of a lot more than that.”
He said the U.S. House has passed the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, but the Senate has not yet taken it up.
“If they do, (President) Joe Biden has said he’ll sign it into law,” McGovern said.
Among its provisions, the act would lower the criminal intent standard for convicting a law enforcement officer for misconduct in a federal prosecution. McGovern also noted that police officers helped to make the case against Chauvin, and that the verdict provides support for good police.
Gaby Stevenson is a member of the Black, Indigenous and People of Color Caucus of A Knee Is Not Enough (AKINE), a community organization that is calling for reforms and alternatives to policing in Easthampton. The organization, led by the caucus, was formed in the wake of Floyd’s killing.
“I’m obviously very happy with the results,” Stevenson said about the verdict in Chauvin’s case.
But the verdict does not address the inherently violent practices embedded in policing, she said.
“I’m still very much aware, and AKINE is very much aware, that the work is not done,” she said.
“AKINE stands in solidarity with George Floyd’s family and the Black Community,” the group announced in a statement. “We speak his name — George Floyd — honoring the sanctity of his life, understanding the continued pain of his family, his loved ones and his community. We reaffirm that George Floyd’s life mattered and that Black lives matter.”
Javier Luengo-Garrido, coordinator of the ACLU’s Immigrant Protection Project and a member of the Northampton Policing Review Commission, said that “the conviction of Derek Chauvin certainly sends a message that police violence against people of color has to end.”
Floyd’s murder is part of a pattern of officers using excessive force around the country, Luengo-Garrido said, noting the Washington Post data that shows that more than 5,000 people have been killed in police shootings since 2015.
He highlighted the need to fight for racial justice, citing bills in the state Legislature that would help, such as H.135, which would limit the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement and H.2110, which would decriminalize the possession of drugs.
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com. Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettenet.com.