George Floyd Murdered by Minneapolis Police; Massive Protests Sweep the Nation
George Floyd, an African-American man, died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer on this day. His death provoked a nation-wide wave of protests about police brutality and racism that continued through to the July 4th weekend and appeared likely to continue after that weekend.
Floyd’s death was caused by one officer holding him to the ground with his knee of Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds (the original estimate was eight minutes and 46 seconds), with Floyd repeatedly crying out, “I can’t breathe!”
The continuing national outpouring of protest was unprecedented in the history of police-community relations in the U.S. and probably had no parallel on any other issue. Not only were large and continuing for weeks, but they were notable for the racial and ethnic mixture of protesters, with a very sizeable turnout of white Americans, but also for the fact that they occurred in many small towns across the c9untry.
The New York Times on June 13, 2020 published an article on “How Black Lives Matter Reached Every Corner of America,” with a map with the sites of all the known protests indicated. The Times acknowledged that the total exceeded 2,000 cities and towns. Find the article and the map here.
The protests provoked immediate and in many cases radical demands for police reforms. The most common demands including outlawing police use of chokeholds (a version of which had caused George Floyd’s death) and for police departments to adopt “Duty to Intervene” policies, which require police officers to report violations of the law or department policy to command officers.
Don’t miss: Wesley Lowery, “They Can’t Kill Us All:” Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement (2016)
Read the definitive new book on police shootings: Franklin Zimring, When Police Kill (2017)
Learn more about police accountability: Samuel Walker and Carol Archbold, The New World of Police Accountability, 3rd ed. (2020)