Understanding Cause and Impact of George Floyd Protests
On May 25, 2020, police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota received a call of a black man who allegedly tried to use a counterfeit bill to pay for food at a delicatessen. According to security camera footage obtained by NBC News, two police officers can be seen approaching the man, 46 year-old George Floyd, in a blue SUV next to the deli. Soon, officers can be seen dragging Floyd violently out of the vehicle. Then, the officers held Floyd with hands behind his back, pushing him onto the sidewalk. Two officers from a Minnesota Park police vehicle stepped off and talked with the two previously arrived officers. They walked Floyd next to their own vehicle, with the Minnesota Park police car blocking the camera view from this point. A struggle soon happened for unknown reasons, with the police later saying Floyd appears to be under influence. Derek Chauvin, one of the officers, can be seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck, while Floyd was pleading that he cannot breathe. He held Floyd, who was visibly unconscious at this point, for a total of 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Two other officers, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Keung, can be seen holding Floyd to restrain him. A fourth officer, Tou Thao, was sneering at Floyd and scolding bystanders for taking video of the incident. Chauvin did not move his knee until an ambulance arrived, and Floyd died at the hospital upon arrival.
The video shot by a bystander of this murder was soon uploaded to social media platforms and sparked condemnation and outrage immediately. In all the videos currently available of the incident, George Floyd did not resist the officers, but he was still choked to death by Chauvin’s kneeling, a practice that is highly controversial even among police trainers. According to journalist Neil MacFarquar’s investigation of police records in the city’s police department, this neck restraint method is still used, but only in “life or death” situations.
In many cities in the U.S, using this often fatal method to arrest people is often still considered legal. In the death of Eric Garner, a black cigarette vendor who, in 2014, was choked by then-NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo to death while being arrested. In both Floyd’s and Garner’s cases, they can be heard exclaiming “I can’t breathe” before losing consciousness. NYPD’s rules specifically banned using this method for arrest, but it is still legal in New York City laws. After a lengthy trial, Pantaleo was fired but also dismissed of criminal charges in 2019.
Floyd’s family grieved on national television, in unfortunately a way which expose one’s private emotions to the public to express their anger and sadness. In a statement from the attorney who is currently representing Floyd’s family, it said: “I spoke with George Floyd’s family this morning and they would like to thank all of the protesters for joining them in standing for JUSTICE. They know we’re all hurting. They know that any decent human being who watches the video of the police killing their Gentle Giant by having his knee on his neck while he was handcuffed facedown will also feel a shortness of breath like George. They told me they want peace in Minneapolis, but they know that Black people want peace in their souls and that until we get #JusticeForFloyd there will be no peace.” On the crowdfunding platform Gofundme, George Floyd’s sister raised nearly 3 million dollars to pay for his funeral and memorial.
In a statement made by the Hennepin County (which is where Minneapolis is located at) County Attorney Mike Freeman, who in a joint press conference stated that “there is other evidence that doesn’t support a criminal charge,” which caused massive online outrage, forcing his office to clarify that he meant evidence that are unfavorable to charging and convicting the officers “needs to be carefully examined” and promised to investigate the case “expeditiously.”
Currently, Chauvin, Thao, Lane and Keung have been fired by the Minnesota Police Department, with Chauvin being charged with third-degree murder, which means the victim is killed by the intent of the suspect, and manslaughter charges. If convicted, Chauvin could face up to 25 years in prison. All of the officers have invoked the fifth amendment, which means they refused to answer prosecutor’s questions to avoid self-incrimination. In the arrest document, it claimed that the autopsy “revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation”, and speculated that Floyd’s underlying health conditions, which includes hypertensive heart disease, was the actual cause of his death. This document was almost identical with the autopsy report of Eric Garner, which the medical examiner also speculated his health conditions as the actual cause of death.
The forefront of the protest is in a middle of an unprecedentedly dangerous moment: with the COVIID-19 pandemic, nearly 2 million Americans have fallen ill and more than 100,000 Americans have died. Almost 40 million people across the country have filed for unemployment benefits, mounting it to the level close to the Great Depression, when it reached nearly 25%. Police can be seen openly clashing with demonstrators, including throwing tear gas and shooting pepper pellets.
Massive protests across Minneapolis and its neighbor city St. Paul against police brutality soon ensued and engulfed the city of Minneapolis in flames. Stores, restaurants and even a police precinct was burned down. Many people were already strained for America’s reignited contentious racial tensions after the police-resulted death of black emergency medical worker Breonna Taylor and the fatal shooting of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed by two white civilians under the name of “citizen’s arrest” with the case pressing no charges for more than two months. Many protesters characterized Floyd’s, Taylor’s and Arbery’s death as “modern day lynching.” In a Daily Beast interview with a protester, he said: “This is 400 years of anger.” Another interviewed protester expressed similar sentiment: “There are so many innocent lives lost by the police. We protest peacefully and there is no accountability. So this happens.”
With the protest being characterized and portrayed as a “riot” by government officials, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, called the state patrol and the state National Guard to respond to the situation. James Frey, the Democrat mayor of Minneapolis, also called the burning “unacceptable” and threatened to hold the protesters who burned properties accountable. By midnight in May 28, the patrol have cleared the ground and many protesters have left.
On 5:11 A.M, May 29,. in Minneapolis around the area where the violent protests occurred, Omar Jiminez, a reporter of Afro-Hispanic descent, identified himself to state patrol officers clearing the ground as a journalist working for CNN. In the eyes of everyone watching the television, with the camera still rolling, Jiminez, who repeatedly identified his journalist identity and never even raised his pitch, was gripped by officers and detained, along with his producer Bill Kirkos and cameraman Leonel Mendez.
Almost immediately, the media world erupted into wide-ranging condemnation of Jiminez’s arrest, which is particularly chilling considering Josh Campbell, a white CNN correspondent also reporting on the ground, was never stopped or arrested by any police officers.
CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker immediately called Governor Tim Walz to protest the arrest of Jiminez. They were taken into the state Public Safety building but released after Zucker’s call to Walz. In a statement on Twitter, CNN Communications referred to the actions as “a clear violation of First Amendment rights.” According to the Minnesota State Patrol, they are freed once they were identified as members of media, which directly contrasts the footage from Mendez’s camera.
With the arrest and charges against Derek Chauvin, there has been new scrutiny against his records as a 19-year veteran of the Minnesota Police Department. Police records and news accounts collected by the Los Angeles Times showed that he had multiple offenses that had resulted in death in the past. In 2005, he and another officer chased a car that resulted in a crash, killing three people when the car they chased collided with a regularly driving vehicle. In 2006, he was among the six charged and acquitted of the shooting a suspect when the suspect pointed a sawed-off shotgun against the officers. In 2008, Chauvin shot a man in the stomach in a domestic violence dispute call. In an interview with reporter Pilar Melendez, the man in the 2008 case, Ira Toles, recalled Chauvin broke into his home without announcing himself and immediately started punching him, and he fought back on terms of self defense. Tou Thao, one of the officers fired but remained not charged, had six complaints with five of them resulting no disciplinary action and one still open.
According to the New York Times’s reporting, Chauvin and Floyd were not strangers to each other. Both of them have worked in a Minneapolis night club, in a team in charge of keeping customers in control.
This incident also resulted in scrutiny in the records of Amy Klobuchar, the current Minnesota Senator who ran for President in the 2020 election and was once widely considered a favorite choice by Joe Biden, the current nominee, as his Vice President pick. During her years as the County Attorney for Hennepin County, she repeatedly opted to send cases with accusation of police brutality to the Grand Jury, a practice law experts claim often favor officers. In interviews on May 29, Klobuchar confessed that those decisions were “wrong.” However, she called a rumor that she personally acquitted Derek Chauvin in the 2006 shooting as a lie, citing that she wasn’t in the County Attorney office anymore when hearings for the case begun. These accusations of misconduct during her County Attorney years weren’t new; during her failed presidential campaign, it was revealed that she once appealed against a judge’s decision to deport undocumented immigrants.
In the White House, the President of the United States had sent mixed messages about his opinions over the Floyd protests. He first made a series of threats on Twitter around 1 A.M., with the words “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and referring the to participants of the unrest “THUGS.” Twitter clapped back at Trump’s incitement of violence in this tweet, hiding this tweet with optional viewing with the words “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.” The quote about looting and shooting, proclaimed by Miami Police Chief Walter Headley in 1967 in a public hearing, at a time when civil rights organizations accuse the department of perpetuating racial hatred. According to NPR, Headley’s words were directly responsible for race riots in Miami in the 1980s. However, later in the day, Trump changed his tone to a much somber one, claiming he had spoken with Floyd’s family and “the family of George is entitled to justice and the people of Minnesota are entitled to live in safety.”
Joe Biden, Trump’s likely Presidential contender, condemned Trump’s words and released a video calling for greater reflection on racism and racist institutions of this country.
Star Tribune, the largest newspaper in Minnesota, wrote an editorial summarizing their reasons reflecting what had happened that made the situation more violent than many imagined. In the editorial, they condemned the actions of Jacob Frey, who called in the State National Guard but praised the decisions for police officers to abandon their precinct and let the markets and restaurants to burn, calling his decisions “puzzling” and “signaling lawlessness.” The editorial board pleaded in this op-ed that leaders need better communications to prevent chaotic situations to ensue in the future, as they feel saddened by the loss of many local businesses, many of whom were supporters of the Floyd family.
