Police reforms slow after George Floyd's murder

On May 25, 2020, a white Minneapolis police officer named Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd, a Black man, for nine minutes and 29 seconds while Floyd repeatedly gasped that he couldn't breathe and pleaded for his mother. Fellow officers Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane helped Chauvin restrain Floyd, while Tou Thao prevented the crowd from rendering aid. A 10-minute video captured by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier would eventually go viral online and help spark massive protests around the globe.

According to the autopsy, Floyd lost consciousness and then died because of a lack of oxygen. Floyd's murder became an international rallying cry against racism and police brutality, inspiring protests all over the world and especially in the US, where countless cities and states declared states of emergency during civil unrest in the weeks that followed. Images of a protests, police barricades and a burning police precinct in Minneapolis went around the world and came to symbolize the pent-up rage over a lack of accountability for police racism and violence.

Joe Biden was a presidential hopeful for the Democratic Party in May 2020. Unlike the incumbent, Donald Trump, Biden made grandiose promises about justice, fundamental reforms of police practices and a fight against institutional racism should he make it to the White House. 

Within two years, Chauvin had been found guilty by state and federal courts of murder and violating Floyd's civil rights and sentenced to over two decades in prison. The other officers involved are also serving jail time.

The verdicts and sentences may have provided Floyd's family and the community with some sense of justice, but experts agree that the results would have likely been very different without video evidence. White police officers frequently get away with acts of racist violence, because Black victims and their families are often simply not believed.

'The sad reality'

In May, the Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa won the Pulitzer Prize for their 2022 book, "His Name Is George Floyd." Samuels told DW that, though Biden has repeatedly promised to enact major police reforms, real change is yet to come.

"Things never go that easily in Washington," Samuels said. "And, even though there is a lot of solidarity in this country to end systemic racism and to do things to prevent something like the incident that happened between George Floyd and Derek Chauvin from ever happening again, it got bogged down in infighting, in bureaucracy."

Protesters were also disappointed to find that their demonstrations did not bring about the change they sought. "They believed that, after witnessing such a horrible murder, this could be the chance: Maybe this is the time for the world to change," Samuels said. "And that eventually confronted the sad reality about how things go in America — that when the concept of racism comes up, people feel blamed, they feel shamed, they don't want to talk about it in the fullest way."

Samuels said race continued to play a role in whether a person might be arrested or even shot by the police. He sees evidence that history is repeating itself. "We're seeing discussions about voting rights reemerge," he said. "We're feeling that there are laws and legislation being put forward to make it harder for people of color to vote in this country, and, again, they're fighting the same sort of battles that most people thought were settled 50 years ago. So it's really unclear what happens now."

Increased political awareness

Now 26, Zaynab Mohamed joined Erin Maye Quade and Clare Oumnou Verbeteb as the first three Black women elected to the Minnesota State Senate in November. Born in Somalia, Mohamed represents an area that includes parts of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Mohamed, who assumed her seat in January, told DW that fighting systemic racism was at the top of her agenda. She said there had been changes for the better since Floyd's murder. "The Black Americans across the state and the country certainly have an experience where they're now more alert than they've ever been before," she said. She mentioned a statewide ban on no-knock warrants, which allow police to enter residences without warning, efforts to prohibit white supremacist groups from infiltrating police forces, and Chauvin's prison sentence. "I am satisfied with him being convicted and being behind bars," she said.

But, Mohamed said, punishing individuals isn't enough to achieve real justice. "True accountability is when we have systemic change across departments, across policies — when we're able to understand why these folks are committing these crimes and we can hold them accountable," she said. "That is true change."

This article was originally written in German.