George Floyd died of strangulation after Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd's neck. This same officer had a litany of complaints filed against him, but the District Attorney, Amy Klobuchar, failed to take any disciplinary action against him.
Klobuchar refused to prosecute officers during her tenure as district attorney; instead, she deferred the matter to a grand jury. She even received letters from the parents of children who were shot and killed, asking that she herself prosecute the officers involved in the shooting deaths of their son. Klobuchar refused.
During grand jury proceedings, the prosecutor has considerable leeway with regard to what they can admit into evidence. The prosecutor presents their case to members of the jury without a judge or defense attorney present; in other words, they wield a lot of power during these proceedings.
When an officer is accused of murder, some jurisdictions choose to send the matter to a grand jury to issue formal charges. Grand Juries, however, rarely indict police officers. This is due to a failure to aggressively prosecute these cases by either omitting critical facts, portraying the victim as the aggressor, or downplaying certain aspects of the incident.
The system already makes it difficult for complainants by allowing the police to regulate their own. Even if a complaint is determined to have merit, many prosecutors defer to grand juries, dodging their duty to hold the police accountable.
