In the Pulitzer-prize winning biography “His Name Is George Floyd,” his sister remembers how, as a toddler, Floyd would jump into his mother’s lap and pepper her cheeks with kisses.
He was just as affectionate as a grown man, family and friends said, describing the Black, 6-foot-6 security guard and truck driver as the type to say “I love you” just because he felt like it.
On May 25, 2020 — his face pressed down on a Minneapolis sidewalk with a White police officer’s knee on his neck — the 46-year-old father of five said goodbye in death as he did in life.
“Tell my kids I love them,” Floyd said, according to a bystander’s cell phone video of the killing. Floyd later called out to his late mother before gasping, “I can’t breathe.”
Former Officer Chauvin, who was fired from the Minneapolis Police Department and is now serving a 20-year-prison sentence for the murder, ignored the pleas of more than a dozen bystanders to release Floyd. He also rebuffed a colleague who asked if they should at least roll Floyd on his side.
While many Americans had seen videos of police killing Black men such as Eric Garner and Alton Sterling, footage of Floyd’s muder was particularly visceral. Around the world, protestors called the killing a modern-day lynching, broadcast to an audience stuck at home from COVID-19 lockdowns.
Despite the outcry and countless headlines about a great American “racial reckoning,” many police agencies and companies have backed away from the promises they made that summer.
Over these five years, The Marshall Project has covered it all — from how Minneapolis police failed to adopt crucial reforms before Floyd’s murder to how departments around the country are now abandoning commitments they made to change in 2020. Here is a selection of those stories.
“What Are Cops Really Thinking When Routine Arrests Turn Violent?”
Using 90,000 complaints against Chicago police over a span of 13 years, along with data from several other large cities and interviews with current and former officers, reporters Simone Weichselbaum, Jamiles Lartey and Humera Lodhi provided insight into why some cops resort to excessive violence during routine encounters.
“If you are gonna use force, you have to use a lot of force, or you are going to die,” Paul Hubel, a Chicago police veteran turned private investigator said of how many police are trained. “You can’t be a namby pamby.”
“As George Floyd Died, Officer Wondered About ‘Excited Delirium’”
Less than two weeks after Floyd’s murder, reporter Alysia Santo explored “excited delirium,” a controversial diagnosis often tied to deaths in law enforcement custody.
Thomas Lane, a Minneapolis officer on the scene, invoked the syndrome when he asked Chauvin if they should roll Floyd onto his side. “I am worried about excited delirium or whatever,” he said, according to authorities.
The article, produced in partnership with Slate, detailed how people with excited delirium are said to be aggressive and incoherent, and to have “superhuman strength,” often after taking stimulant drugs such as cocaine or methamphetamine. Police groups and some experts say it’s a real condition, requiring immediate action and medical treatment. But critics, including some medical experts, have attacked it as junk science, deployed to justify excessive police force.
“‘That Could Have Been Me’: The People Derek Chauvin Choked Before George Floyd”
Three years before Floyd’s death, Zoya Code found herself handcuffed, facedown on the ground, with Chauvin’s knee on her. “He just stayed on my neck,” she told The Marshall Project in a story produced in partnership with The New York Times.
Code and two other people gave their first-ever interviews about their violent encounters with Chauvin to reporters Abbie VanSickle and Lartey. A fourth person, a Minneapolis grandfather, said he watched the officer choke a young man in March 2019, providing details to reporters that matched a police report in the case.
“Looking back on Mr. Floyd, that could have been me,” one man said as he recalled how Chauvin wrapped his arms around his neck during a 2016 arrest.
“Before George Floyd’s Death, Minneapolis Police Failed to Adopt Reforms, Remove Bad Officers”
Floyd was murdered in a city many had hoped would be a beacon for progressive policing. But, as Lartey and Weichselbaum reported, police failed to adopt important reforms.
The Minneapolis Police Department had revised its use-of-force policy, which it later used to fire Chauvin and others implicated in Floyd’s death. But advocates said police officials never followed through on promises to update their policies on neck restraints or to follow a federal recommendation to fix an inadequate process for identifying problematic officers.
“They never got back to the public, it is frustrating,” said Chuck Turchick, a police accountability advocate who was on the committee formed to help the city roll out federal reforms. “It was a joke.”
“The Minneapolis Cop Who Beat Him Pleaded Guilty. He Still Fears the Department Won’t Change.”
Over several interviews with Lartey, Jaleel Stallings chronicled his journey through the criminal justice system after Minneapolis police beat and arrested him during protests that followed Floyd’s murder.
In the story, produced in partnership with The Washington Post, Stallings described how it felt to see a social media account for President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign describe him as a “would-be-cop-killer.”
“You took my innocence away,” Stallings said of the social media post. “You put it so that every new person that I meet, I now have to fight past the stereotype of them thinking I’m the bad guy.”
Stallings also outlined what happened when he decided to reject a prosecutor’s offer of a plea deal and take the criminal case to trial, where he made the risky move to testify in his own defense.
“Five Years After George Floyd’s Murder, Police Reforms Are Being Rolled Back”
In Minnesota and a few other places across the country, several recent events have signaled a shift away from reforms promised in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder. And police accountability initiatives, like oversight boards, are becoming either rudderless or stripped of what little investigatory power some of them possessed.
