CNN: Derek Chauvin Could Receive More Than $1 Million in Retirement Benefits Even If He Is Convicted of Murdering Floyd

KAFANOV: "Even if Derek Chauvin is convicted of killing George Floyd, he could be eligible for a salary benefit of more than a million dollars. Now, of course, he was fired quickly from the police department where he served since 2001. He was eventually charged with second degree murder. But he still stands to benefit from a pension partially funded by taxpayers that could stretch into over a million bucks. And this boils down to state law. In some places, if you’re convicted of a felony, you would have to forfeit your pension. That’s unfortunately not the case, it’s simply not the case here in Minnesota. Now this reporting has been done by my colleagues Blake Ellis and Melanie Higgin. They found that Chauvin would be eligible for annual payments in the ballpark of $50,000 a year, starting at the age of 55. He’s 44 years old right now. This was calculated by a CNN analysis that effectively looked at his tenure, payroll data from 2019, as well as Minneapolis Police Department’s salary schedules. That calculation showed that over a 30-year period he could get payments of more than $1.5 million, that doesn’t even take into account cost of living increases. I should note that less than half of states in America have laws on the books that would require a police officer who was convicted of a felony to forfeit the salary. Less than half of states in America. As we have these growing calls to defund the police and divest that money into social services and other parts of city budgets, this could become a growing flash point."