When the verdicts came in guilty, guilty and guilty a sense of relief, of accountability served and crisis at least temporarily averted, was palpable across the United States on Tuesday after a jury found Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter in killing Floyd, a Black man who took his last breath pinned to the street with the officer s knee on his neck.
But when it came to what s next for America, the reaction was more hesitant. Some were hopeful, pointing to the protests and sustained outcry over Floyd s death as signs of change to come, in policing and otherwise.
Others were more circumspect, wondering if one hopeful result really meant the start of something better in a country with a history of racial injustice, especially in the treatment of Black people at the hands of law enforcement.
Sense of relief, hesitancy: NJ reacts to Chauvin guilty verdict
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Justice Served: Early Reaction To Chauvin Verdict In Newark
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Can Newark Maintain its Hard-Earned Police Reforms?
Four years of federal oversight might be coming to a close. The community and the cops have started to learn from one another. Can it last? April 12, 20216:00 AM
A crowd gathers at a People’s Organization for Progress rally to protest police brutality on August 17, 2020 in Newark, New Jersey. The Peoples Organization for Progress has gathered every Monday for their Justice Mondays since 2016, only taking a few weeks off during the coronavirus.
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This story was published in partnership with The Trace.
When the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2021, Newark, New Jersey, reached a policing milestone. The city’s police had gone an entire calendar year without firing a shot at a civilian. It was a big deal: A department criticized by local activists and residents, one under the watchful eye of the federal government, finished 2020 without killing anyone the first time since 2015.
The alleged abuse that left one woman inmate with a concussion and another in a wheelchair earlier this year happened inside New Jersey s only prison for women on a unit named Restorative Housing.
Advocates for inmates say that unit at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Union Township is not restorative, and, in practice, is the very sort of isolated confinement that was supposed to have been limited under a state law that went into effect Aug. 1.
Now those advocates and inmates are raising questions about compliance amid renewed scrutiny of how well New Jersey oversees its prisons.
“It certainly appears as if every change has been cosmetic, said Bonnie Kerness, director of the prison watch program of the American Friends Service Committee.