This afternoon, the jury for the trial of ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd, delivered a guilty verdict for all three counts. 

Mass Liberation AZ issued the following statement in response to the verdict and these events:

“What matters most right now is George Floyd’s family and what we as a community are doing for them. What matters most is their healing. We cannot speak for them, but the People of the State of Minnesota spoke when they found Derek Chauvin guilty. But a guilty verdict isn’t enough. It could never be enough. This conviction will not restore what has been stolen from George Floyd’s family. The reality is that prison sentences will never heal nor will they reduce harm. Prosecuting and incarcerating cops will NOT end the racist system that led to this murder and the countless other murders of Black people. It is about a system, NOT a situation. 

Derek Chauvin is not a single bad actor doing harm. Chauvin represents an entire culture of violence that we now know as “policing” that dates back over 400 years and originates during the era of slavery. This is a legacy that has become a pattern of practice in Minneapolis. The police in the same city killed Philando Castile in 2016, eight miles away from where George Floyd was murdered in 2020. Just last week, police murdered Daunte Wright eleven miles away from where they killed George Floyd. It happened before this murder. It will happen again after this verdict. This history is repeated all over the country and is evidence that a guilty verdict will not deter police from killing.

It took the whole world witnessing a police officer killing a Black man on film, going viral, to get some form of accountability. But this verdict is not “justice”. From the beginning of this case, Chauvin was held to a different standard than the rest of society.

Anyone else would have been charged with pre-meditated murder; Chauvin was charged with a list of lesser included offenses. And while, as police and prison abolitionists, we don’t believe carceral systems are the answer to harm, we know that prosecuting killer cops is the only available tool our society provides to acknowledge it.  

If we want to see true justice, we must divest from police who keep taking lives and reinvest in systems that give life. We must invest in people, in communities, in health. Punishment is not progress. Systems of punishment can never lead to healing or liberation. Justice can only occur in a world without police and prisons.”