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Black Man Killed By Police in Minnesota
“I can’t breathe.”
The words of 46-year-old George Floyd as he lay on the street in Minneapolis after he was arrested on suspicion of passing a counterfeit bill are eerily reminiscent of the police killing of Eric Garner in New York.
Monday, just as it happened on Staten Island in 2014, cellphone cameras by witnesses recorded the event where a policeman knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes as Floyd pleaded for his life.
Onlookers urged the police to stop, including one nurse who warned that Floyd was close to dying. Floyd was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Unlike the Garner case that took five years before the policeman who killed him in a chokehold was removed from the New York Police Dept., Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo immediately fired Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and Alexander Kueng and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made the announcement Tuesday.
The grief-stricken family believes the firing of the police is a good start. What they really want is for them to be charged with murder and Frey agrees that Chauvin should face charges.
“They could have tased him, maced him,” said Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd. “Instead, they put their knee in his neck and just sat on him and didn’t care at all.”
Floyd’s cousin, Tera Brown, also weighed in on the arresting officers’ actions, saying, “We want to see them charged with murder and we want them to be convicted. They need to pay for what they did.”
While Floyd’s family has retained lawyer Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights lawyer who has represented the families of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Ahmaud Arbery, the people of Minneapolis took to the streets to protest, marching to the police station.
Hundreds were out Tuesday carrying signs and protesting peacefully in the area where Floyd, who had worked as a security guard, was arrested.
But riot police tear-gassed and shot protesters with rubber bullets after the rally shifted to surround a nearby police station. Windows were broken and some police cars were vandalized.
On Wednesday, protesters returned to the area to continue showing their outrage.
State and federal agencies are investigating Floyd’s death and Frey has asked the County attorney to consider filing charges against Chauvin.
“We are not talking about a split-second decision that was made incorrectly,” Frey said. “There’s somewhere around 300 seconds in those five minutes, every one of which the officer could have turned back … and removed his knee from George Floyd’s neck.”
Yahoo News, USA Today, CNN and NewsOne contributed to this report. (Previously published May 28, 2020)
