The Minneapolis City Council has agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by Jonh Pope Jr. and Zoya Code for $8.9 million, two victims of former police officer Derek Chauvin.
CBS reports that Pope and Code stated that officers failed to report Chauvin’s illegal actions, and police officials allowed him to continue policing communities after they had evidence of misconduct.
“The easy thing is to blame Chauvin for everything,” Bob Bennett, the attorney for Pope and Code, said, cited by CBS. “The important thing that the video shows is that none of those nine to a dozen officers at the scene ever reported it, ever tried to stop it. They violated their own policy and really any sense of humanity.”
Minneapolis’s Mayor Jacob Frey apologized to everyone affected by Chauvin’s actions and Floyd’s murder. According to The Associated Press, Mayor Frey acknowledged that had Chauvin followed proper procedures, Floyd would still be alive today.
“He should have been fired in 2017,” Frey added when speaking of Chauvin. “He should have been held accountable in 2017.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara also weighed in on Chauvin’s actions. “[We] [were] forced to reckon once again with the deplorable acts of someone who has proven to be a national embarrassment,” O’Hara said in the statement, cited by AP News, noting “systemic failure” in the Minneapolis Police Department as the reason for the years of oversight.
“I am appalled at the repetitive behavior of this coward and disgusted by the inaction and acceptance of that behavior by members of this department,” O’Hara said to AP News. “Such conduct is a disgrace to the badge and an embarrassment to what is truly a very noble profession.”
In 2017, Code was arrested for allegedly trying to strangle her mother with an extension cord. That same year, Pope, who was 14 years old at the time of his arrest, was subjected to excessive force, CBS reports.
Back in May 2020, George Floyd was arrested by Minneapolis police for allegedly using counterfeit money at a local store. During the arrest, former police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes while Floyd repeatedly yelled out that he couldn’t breathe before dying.
Chauvin, alongside three of his colleagues, was charged with two counts of aiding and abetting in the death of Floyd. Chauvin was sentenced to 252 months in prison.
Other former police officers involved in the murder of Floyd, Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao, were sentenced to 31/2 years in prison.