After 10 hours of deliberation, a Minnesota jury found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on Tuesday for the May 2020 killing of George Floyd. Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for over 9 minutes, fatally suffocating him, was convicted on all three charges of which he was accused: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.
Chauvin has yet to be sentenced for Floyd’s murder, which will likely take place in the coming weeks.
LGBTQ+ advocacy groups and leaders joined communities of color across the country in applauding the verdict. These organizations pointed out, however, that more work needs to be done to address police brutality and systemic racism in the United States.
“We celebrate this bittersweet victory while knowing that George Floyd’s family will never get him back and knowing that other families are still awaiting justice,” said Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings in a statement. “We know that one verdict does not reverse this truth: We live in a nation where people of color — even 12-year-old children like Tamir Rice — are routinely killed with impunity by those who are supposed to protect them.”
The media advocacy organization GLAAD also spoke to the importance of accountability in bringing about the transformative change needed to reform policing. Sarah Kate Ellis, its president and CEO, said in a statement that the outcome in Chauvin’s trial “now must lead us toward greater safety and trust, especially for Black people, queer people of color and transgender people and youth who are disproportionately at risk of harassment, discrimination and violence, including violence by police.”
“Every American from a vulnerable community has a right to demand these necessary changes by protest, and the media must be free to cover these critically important social justice movements,” Ellis said, referring to the arrest and detention of journalists covering last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
While LGBTQ+ organizations called to dismantle systems of white supremacy affecting all communities of color, issues of justice and policing also affect queer and transgender people across racial demographics. GLAAD pointed to a 2015 report from The Williams Institute, a pro-LGBTQ+ think tank at UCLA, which found that 48% of LGBTQ+ violence survivors reported being subjected to police misconduct, including arrest without sufficient cause as well as excessive use of force and entrapment.
Research shows that police violence, when directed at members of LGBTQ+ communities, disproportionately targets LGBTQ+ people of color and transgender or gender-nonconforming people. A 2015 report from the National Center for Trans Equality (NCTE) noted that 22% of trans people reported experiencing harassment in their interactions with police, while 6% said they were assaulted due to their racial or gender identity.
A different report found much higher rates of police abuse directed at trans people. According to NCTE’s U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS), which was conducted the same year, 58% of respondents who had interacted with police said they had experienced some form of mistreatment.
According to NCTE, the most likely targets of police abuse were transgender people of color and individuals who engage in sex work.
As America works toward a future where no one faces brutality and violence simply because of who they are, LGBTQ Victory Fund said that Tuesday’s verdict represents “a step toward justice, and history proves these steps cannot be taken for granted.”
“George Floyd has ignited a movement that continues to inspire and has forced many to look at themselves, and their country, more critically,” said the organization, which supports LGBTQ+ candidates seeking elected office. “Today is a step — one of many needed — on the long road to true justice for Black Americans.”
