The guilty verdict in a Minneapolis police officer’s trial in the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, strikes a chord with many in Hawaii following recent allegations that race played a role in two fatal shootings by Honolulu police.

While the verdict is momentous, “what it will mean in the long term remains to be seen,” said Akiemi Glenn, founder of the Popolo Project, a community organization that amplifies and explores what it means to be Black in Hawaii.

“In the aftermath of Mr. Floyd’s killing over the summer, our local police chief said Hawaii doesn’t need this kind of reckoning,” Glenn said. “We don’t have these problems.”

Yet in the following months, Glenn said Honolulu police reported an over-representation in the police use of force against Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, “but we also saw that for Black people. We’re around 2% to 4% of the population and represented around 7% of police use of force.”

Ex-police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee to Floyd’s neck while on the ground for nine minutes, causing his death.

“That’s not appropriate punishment” for suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill, Glenn said. But “some people are saying that’s an appropriate response for a Chuukese boy and a Zulu man. ‘That’s what happens when you engage in these types of behaviors.’”

Iremamber Sykap, 16, was shot multiple times in Pawaa while driving a car allegedly involved in a series of crimes. Lindani Myeni, 29, was shot in Nuuanu outside of a home where an alleged burglary occurred. Myeni fought with officers, who failed to identify themselves before ordering him to the ground, according to a body cam video.

“The verdict in the (Derek) Chauvin case pushes us all to think … that there are larger forces at play here than procedure and just training,” Glenn said. There are larger kinds of cultural and social ideas at play that make it difficult and dangerous to be a person of color in a lot of spaces.”

Glenn said the verdict was “a milestone because it’s very rare for a police officer to be convicted of murder.” She added, “It also remains to be seen what we do with that, whether this takes us into systemic change or whether it’s just revising the police manual here in Honolulu or elsewhere.”

The ACLU of Hawaii said the two recent Oahu cases raise the issue of how racial bias, explicit or implicit, might play a role in the officers’ escalation to the use of deadly force.

The Honolulu Police Department announced Tuesday it would not release any body-worn camera footage of the Sykap shooting because minors are involved.

Jacob Aliksa, 42, a retired Army sergeant, said despite serving 20 years in the Army, and deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, people view him in Hawaii only as Micronesian, and members of his community are subjected to name-calling such as “cockroaches.”

“The things against Micronesians as a whole — it’s getting out of hand,” he said.

He said there have been other cases of wrongful death involving police and members of his community that have been brought to the Federated States of Micronesia’s consular office.

In the Sykap case, “a lot of people say he deserved it,” he said. “There are other ways they could have handled it, but he didn’t deserve to get shot four or five times.”

NAACP President Alphonso Braggs said, “I believe that justice was rendered in finding him (Chauvin) guilty today. … I believe that this particular case is eye-opening to a global society on ensuring that law enforcement prevents unnecessary death in the performance of their jobs.”

Braggs cautioned the media to not over-sensationalize one side or lead with the race of a Black suspect, for example.

“Police need to be in the community and create relationships in that community so trust could be established,” he said. “Kids need to be able to trust law enforcement. We have to do better as a community working with law enforcement.”

Former State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers Treasurer and retired HPD Sgt. Kimo Smith worried about the impact of the Chauvin verdict.

An officer may be “judged by a jury that may not understand department rules and regulations or training requirements that you’re mandated to follow.”

“You’re going to find officers hesitant to act,” he said.