Following the conviction of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told SiriusXM’s “The Joe Madison Show” on Wednesday that it is “critically important” to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Ellison said the act is “paramount” and “critically important,” stressing that “if we pass that, it’s another substantial step towards justice.”
He specified that approving the legislation will “bring more transparency, more accountability, and it will allow, the system to get rid of people who don’t belong in it. Policing is not for everybody. There needs to be a better system to route the bad people out. And so it will be, I believe a substantial step forward for us.”
Floyd family attorney Ben Crump added on "The Joe Madison Show" that until that legislation becomes law, “justice for George Floyd is not complete.”
When asked by Madison what sentencing recommendation Ellison will make to the judge in the Chauvin case, Ellison responded “I think everybody can count on us recommending a sentence that is commensurate with the nine minute and 29 seconds slow death of George Floyd.”
He added that while he couldn’t publicly talk about the fate of the other three police officers who were there to arrest Floyd, Ellison said “it’s possible” they will cut a deal before their trials in August.
Crump stressed about the verdict that “my prayer is that is the new precedent now - that black people don't have to pick one or the other, only get partial justice. We have a right to get full justice.”
Crump said it is important to remember that had there not been a clear video of the incident, the police’s original version that Floyd died while resisting arrest would have been believed by much of the public.
Ellison reiterated that the quest for justice is far from finished.
The attorney general said that “justice implies restoration. Justice implies a rebalancing as to where it should be. And we’re not there. We’re not anywhere close to there.
However, he did acknowledge that "we did take a substantial step because accountability and holding somebody accountable for their actions is a step toward justice. But when you look at all the cases, it’s just still too many of them to say that yesterday achieved a standard of justice. It signaled that a true and fair, accountable, trial was possible. It signaled the right things, but getting us where we gotta go means that we’re gonna stop seeing this rash and these series of killing that we’ve been seeing them for years and years.”
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Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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