Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) believes the “circumstances and the evidence” surrounding the police killing of George Floyd support the charges against the Minneapolis cops involved in his death. But the former prosecutor in her sees the harsh reality ahead.
“It will not be easy to get a conviction,” Harris said on “The View” Monday. (See the video below.)
“It is still the case that jurors are inclined to trust ― because that’s part of the social contract ― to trust police officers, and that has been part of the difficulty that so many prosecutors have had when they brought these cases,” Harris said. “But there’s no denying that this — this officer and those who were his accomplices should pay a real consequence and accountability for what they’ve done.”
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, faces second-degree murder charges for the killing of Floyd, a Black man who died after Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. The other officers at the scene, Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, were charged with aiding and abetting Floyd’s murder.
“I don’t think there is any question that he did not die of natural causes,” Harris said on the talk show, per ABC News. “He died while this police officer, who had been invested with a badge and a gun by the people, used the power he was given by the people to have his knee on a human being’s neck.”
Harris, a former presidential candidate and a potential running mate for Joe Biden, has been pushing for police reform in the Senate and co-authored a bill to make lynching a federal crime. The measure received near-unanimous support but was held up by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) last week.