Former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao has been sentenced to 57 months (almost five years) in prison for his involvement in the death of George Floyd. The sentencing was in relation to his conviction for aiding and abetting manslaughter, which was handed down by a Minnesota judge in May.
During the trial, Thao testified that he acted as a “human traffic cone,” holding back bystanders while his fellow officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes. The tragic incident, which occurred on May 25, 2020, sparked widespread protests across the United States, demanding justice for George Floyd.
All four former police officers involved in the incident faced federal civil rights charges, and in addition to state murder charges, Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, and J Alexander Kueng were convicted of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. Thao was sentenced to three and a half years over his civil rights conviction, and the 57-month sentence will be served concurrently.
In a comprehensive 177-page ruling, Judge Peter Cahill stated that Thao’s actions, which included shielding Chauvin and the other officers from the crowd, impeded a trained emergency medic from providing assistance to George Floyd. The judge found that Thao’s actions were objectively unreasonable from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, considering the totality of the circumstances, and emphasized that Thao had a duty to intervene and stop the excessive use of force by his fellow officers, as well as render medical aid.
