Mr. Thao and Mr. Kueng were charged with willfully failing to stop Mr. Chauvin from using unreasonable force. Mr. Chauvin held his knee on the neck and the upper back of the teenager, even after the child lay prone, handcuffed and unresisting, and that resulted in injuries, the indictment said. The latest charges are separate from the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced on April 21. And they are separate from the state charges against Mr. Thao, Mr. Kueng and Mr. Lane. In recent years, the Justice Department has opened civil rights investigations into high-profile assaults and killings of Black people by police officers, but the inquiries have rarely resulted in charges against officers in part because the standard for the federal charge — that in the course of policing, an officer willfully deprived a person of civil rights — is a high bar to meet.

Source: New York Times May 07, 2021 15:03 UTC