The city of Minneapolis agreed Thursday to pay approximately $8.9 million to settle two lawsuits involving former police officer Derek Chauvin, who was accused of killing George Floyd in 2020.
In the lawsuits, which stemmed from the 2017 arrests, two people alleged that Chauvin pressed his knee into their necks years before the same tactic proved fatal during Floyd’s arrest.
The city announced that John Pope will receive $7.5 million and Zoya Code will receive $1.375 million.
“He should have been fired in 2017. He should have been held accountable in 2017,” Mayor Jacob Frey said of Chauvin (D) at a news conference, adding that “if supervisors had done the right thing, George Floyd would not have been killed.”
Floyd’s murder sparked nationwide protests and a reckoning over race and police brutality.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara called Chauvin, who is now in federal prison for Floyd’s murder, a “national disgrace to the policing profession” and “an example of the cancer that has infected this department.” “.
He apologized on behalf of the department to Pope, Code and their families.
“To the officers who are currently in our Minneapolis Police Department who are enraged by the type of conduct that Derek Chauvin committed, that is the type of person we want in our police department,” Frey said. “That’s the direction we need to go.”
The former officer had already been criminally convicted on federal charges related to the incident involving Pope and pleaded guilty in 2021, according to the city. He was not charged in the Code case.
Chauvin was found guilty of second degree murder in the Floyd case and was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. He was sentenced to 21 concurrent years for violating Floyd’s civil rights.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
