Consider This from NPR - Taking Stock of What George Floyd's Murder – And Life – Have Changed, Two Years Later

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

This week marks two years since George Floyd's murder at the hands of a white police officer and the subsequent racial justice protests and calls for police reform that spread from Minneapolis across the country. President Joe Biden has signed a new executive order meant to change how police use force among other measures, which experts say is a small — but important — step in preventing more tragedies like Floyd's death.But as Minnesota Public Radio's Matt Sepic reports, some Minneapolis residents say they're still waiting on the reform that leaders promised.Also in this episode, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa of The Washington Post discuss their new biography, His Name Is George Floyd, and how those who knew Floyd best want to make sure his legacy covers more than his murder.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University performs breakthrough research every year, making discoveries that improve human health, combat climate change, and move society forward. More at iu.edu slash forward. This week marks two years since those protests began, a movement that spread from Minneapolis across the country. No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace! It was sparked by George Floyd's murder at the hands of a white police officer.

And two years to the day after that brutal killing came this moment. This executive order is going to deliver the most significant police reform in decades. President Joe Biden signed an executive order meant to change how police use force. The most direct impact will be on federal law enforcement like Border Patrol and the FBI. There are about 100,000 federal officers nationwide compared to about 700,000 officers at the state and local level. Under this new order, federal officers will be told to use force, quote, only when no reasonably effective, safe, and feasible alternative appears to exist. And deadly force? That is authorized only when necessary. Some local departments already do this, but the hope is those that haven't adopted these standards will.

It's a measure of what we can do together to heal the very soul of this nation, to address profound fear and trauma, exhaustion that particularly Black Americans have experienced for generations, and to channel that private pain and public outrage into a rare mark of progress for years to come. The executive order also has a variety of reform ideas that have been recommended for years, including a new database of police misconduct reports. The goal there is to prevent so-called wandering officers that get fired from one agency from being hired by another that didn't know about that disciplinary history. You know, I don't think either side is 100 percent happy with it. You know, us or the civil rights community.

That's Jim Pascoe, the national executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, one of the groups the Biden administration consulted in crafting this order. The White House also consulted with civil rights groups. Congress never came to a consensus on a broader police reform bill. Pascoe told NPR, at least this encourages important changes. But I think it's a good foundation, a good framework for improving the relationship between police and the communities they serve. I think this is a relatively small step.

That's Walter Katz, a former public defender who has also worked on police reform in different cities. He says the executive order does some good things. There was great promise in 2020 and 2021, at least in the beginning. And I think since then, some of the energy dissipated. So I think the Biden administration has taken a step forward within the power that it has. But where does that leave people in Minneapolis today? We're standing in place, in situ, where a Black man was lynched in public. And we're saying we're not moving.

Consider this. After two years, some Minneapolis residents say they are still waiting on the reform that leaders promised. And those that knew George Floyd best want to make sure his legacy is more than his murder. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Friday, May 27th. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating's what has happened since George Floyd died. The white former officer convicted of his murder, Derek Chauvin, is in prison. Three other former officers who were on duty with him are also likely to face prison time. They are waiting to be sentenced after a federal conviction for violating Floyd's civil rights, and they face

state charges too. But the sweeping changes that so many advocates pushed for after Floyd's death have not become a reality. Lamyra Sanders is from South Carolina, and earlier this week she visited the Minneapolis intersection where Floyd died. It has been renamed George Perry Floyd Square in his honor. People from around the world have come to pay their respects over the last two years. There is a place of sadness that still looms here, and it is our prayer that one day that justice will be served and that this will not be a problem. There's plenty of work to be done. Floyd's aunt, Angela Harrison, said this to supporters who flocked to a vigil at the intersection on Wednesday. Sometimes I hear people say we need to make it better for us. What better is not good enough. We just need to make it equal.

Matt Sepik of Minnesota Public Radio spoke to Minneapolis residents about what they are still hoping to see. While countless numbers of people have visited George Floyd Square over the last two years, Marsha Howard has been a constant presence here, leading a protest occupation of about a dozen people who keep the area tidy and watch for trouble. Minneapolis city leaders hope to build a permanent memorial here as part of a plan to rebuild the intersection. But Howard, a black 49-year-old high school English teacher and retired Marine, vows not to let that happen until there are substantive improvements in the way police treat people of color. The only thing that seems to change anything in the city of Minneapolis is collective action. We're standing in place in situ where a black man was lynched in public. And we're saying we're not moving. But Howard says little has fundamentally changed. She points to February's police

killing of 22-year-old Amir Locke during a no-knock raid at the Minneapolis apartment where he was sleeping. Locke, who was black, was holding a gun, but he was not suspected of a crime, nor was he named in the search warrant. The calls for police reform were loudest in the weeks just after Floyd's murder when council member Jeremiah Ellison stood on a stage at a park with eight of his colleagues. At their feet in large block letters were the words defund police. All right they're telling me to say it again this council is going to dismantle this police department. That did not happen. The council has continued to fund new recruit classes to replace the 300

officers who've left the force, which is plagued by low morale. And despite a poll showing deep mistrust of the MPD, last November, 56 percent of voters rejected a proposal to replace it with a new safety agency that would have included law enforcement, quote, if necessary. Cammie Chavis, who leads the criminal justice program at Wake Forest University's law enforcement, quote, if necessary. Cammie Chavis, who leads the criminal justice program at Wake Forest University's law school, says the plan was bold, but its lack of details likely scared off voters. I think it was probably just a bridge too far for some people to say, well, wait a minute, we're going to do away with what we have and we're not sure what this new thing is you're proposing. Chavis says any transformational shift will come by court order.

A U.S. Justice Department investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department is expected to result in judicial oversight through a consent decree. Mayor Jacob Fry has made some tweaks to policing policy, including banning chokeholds, low-level traffic stops, and no-knock raids. But critics point out that the latest police labor contract does not include tougher disciplinary procedures. While calls for significant lasting change are widespread, momentum has been uneven. Meanwhile, Marsha Howard and her fellow activists say they'll continue to honor Floyd's memory, not only with rallies and vigils, but by being present here for as long as it takes to bring meaningful change to policing. Matt Sepik of Minnesota Public Radio. Most people still only know George Floyd for how he died. Many don't know how he lived. He

habitually told friends that he loved them, often in all-caps text messages. He was self-conscious about his 6-foot-6-inch frame and suffered from lifelong claustrophobia. He and his roommate in Minneapolis moved their mattresses into the living room right next to each other. They wanted to watch over each other. They had met each other in rehab, and they wanted to help ensure that they didn't stray. That's Washington Post reporter Robert Samuels. He and his colleague Tolu Olorunipa have written a new biography of George Floyd. What George Floyd understood was that they were in a society that was unforgiving toward their missteps,

and they needed to look out for each other if they were going to make it through. The book is titled His Name is George Floyd, One Man's Life and a Struggle for Racial Justice. NPR's Adrian Florido spoke to the authors. Olarunipa says the book also explores how a long history of racism affected every part of Floyd's life. We traced his ancestry back to a great-great-grandfather who was born enslaved in North Carolina and after the Civil War was able to get his freedom. And he quickly amassed a great amount of wealth and land by working the land with his large family. But during the turn of the century, he lost all of his land to fraudulent tax sales and dubious business deals. And he was unable to transfer any of that to his descendants. And we wanted to show why George Floyd came into the world poor.

We saw George Floyd's family wealth be stripped away because of racism. And it impacted his life. It impacted his beginning. It made him essentially come into the world born with two strikes as someone who was black and poor in America. One detail that struck me in your reporting and that comes up over and over throughout the book is he was really aware that his sort of mere presence as a big black man often scared people. Why did you dive into this aspect of his personality? It's key to understanding those moments that we all saw on the video of Floyd's final moments, his fear of being assaulted by the police from his earliest days. He would go into a room and shake everyone by hand just to put them at ease, just to say, you know, I know I'm a big

guy. I know my size may intimidate you, but, you know, look at me eye to eye. I'm okay. I'm not going to hurt you. And that was something that was a big part of his personality. And even when he got caught up in the criminal justice system and spent time in prison, some of the people inside the prison said, why don't you use your size to exploit the other prisoners? And he said, that's not what I'm about. That's not what I want to be. I just want to do my time and go home. I don't want to be seen as a bully. Yeah. It was also one of the cruelest contradictions about himself. By the time he gets to high school, he's this tall string bean of a guy. And immediately people say, what you need to do is focus on playing football. And George Floyd was taught that maybe academics isn't the way to escape poverty, football is. But he was left with a body that if it was not on a football field, it would be seen as something intimidating, threatening, and ultimately one of the things that would make him seem as a threat

to a police officer. Your book doesn't shy away from Floyd's missteps. He was arrested on drug charges. He was addicted to opioids. He pled guilty to an armed robbery for which he spent years in prison. And his friends and family seem to speak to you pretty openly about his criminal record. What did they say about his struggles with the law? Well, they wanted us to understand that Floyd wasn't someone who wanted to take advantage of other people, but he also was someone who came from a community that was ravaged by drugs and where police officers often targeted for low-hanging fruit arrest. Floyd was once arrested for just walking through his neighborhood, literally, for trespassing. He was across the street from his house, and he was stopped more than 20 times over the course of his life,

including by six officers who were later charged themselves with breaking the law. So there was a sense of police corruption that took place. Now, Floyd's own mistakes were definitely evident because we got access to his diary entries and his writings in which he agonized over his mistakes and over the decisions that he made and the struggles that he had to try to break free from addiction and break free from his criminal past. Well, the way he tried to reset his life was by moving to Minnesota in 2017 from Texas, where he'd lived for most of his life. And he signed up for a rehabilitation program designed for black men.

He found a roommate. He managed to rent this fancy townhome in the middle of a middle-class white suburb. For a while, things seemed to be looking up for him in Minneapolis, didn't they? Yeah, this was his dream. He found a job. He was clean. He got this new townhome with his roommate, the person who he met in rehab.

And a few months after he leaves rehab and he's living in this townhome, he comes home after a double shift of working and he encounters his roommate, unconscious and cold on the couch, Big E. And it turns out that Big E had overdosed and he died. And when that happened, the gregarious, friendly George Floyd that everyone knew, he went into isolation. And when one of his friends happened to run into him at a gas station, he tells his friend about what a dark place he was in. And that set George Floyd on a course to relapse.

You know, as I read your book, I really came to understand what a special man George Floyd on a course to relapse. You know, as I read your book, I really came to understand what a special man George Floyd was. But I also sort of found myself wondering, was he unique? Or could you have written this kind of book about many other Black men? I think all of us know someone like George Floyd in our life, that you love being around, that can be a little hapless, that things in life have never fully gone their way, but they carry on a spirit of persistence. But one thing that we wanted folks to understand when they read the book, Adrian, is that the institutional hardships Institutional hardships and barriers that were presented to George Floyd could have happened to almost any Black man living in America. And that's one of the terrifying things about it. Tolu and I, we were very conscientious about how easy it can be to exploit Black pain as if that were the full story.

But one of the wonderful things about writing about George Floyd is George Floyd himself, who never stopped trying, who remained persistent, even though he acknowledged those barriers and acknowledged those mistakes. And that is a reason why I think so many people who knew him took up the cause for justice. Robert Samuels and Tolu Olorunipa, authors of His Name is George Floyd, One Man's Life, and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Earlier in this episode, you also heard reporting from NPR's Martin Costi. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.