MINNEAPOLIS – Minneapolis has seen changes since the tragic events of Memorial Day 2020 when George Floyd was killed by a police officer. Some improvements have been made, but challenges remain.
This weekend marked five years since George Floyd lost his life under the knee of Officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin’s actions sparked widespread outrage and led to renewed calls for racial justice across the nation.
In the aftermath, protests demanding justice for Floyd erupted in cities nationwide. Many protesters echoed Floyd’s final words, “I can’t breathe.” While most demonstrations were peaceful initially, some escalated into violence, leaving parts of Minneapolis in disarray. The city continues to grapple with the question of how to memorialize the intersection where Floyd tragically died.
The Minneapolis Police Department has faced some changes under court supervision that aim to reduce racial disparities. Violent crime, which spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and after Floyd’s death, is mostly back around pre-pandemic levels, although homicides are inching up.
A place of pilgrimage
The intersection where a crowd of concerned onlookers urged Chauvin and other officers to heed Floyd’s dying cries quickly became known as George Floyd Square.
A large sculpture of a clenched fist is just one of the tributes to Floyd. He died steps from the Cup Foods convenience store that has since been renamed Unity Foods. The area draws visitors from around the world.
One visitor last week was Alfred “A.J.” Flowers Jr., a local activist, who said the police killings of young Black men before Floyd’s murder only fueled the frustration and rage that erupted on the streets five years ago.
It’s significant that the Black community tends to come together at “places where we die, whether it’s by our own hands or by police violence,” Flowers said.
The fate of George Floyd Square
A majority of City Council members support building a pedestrian-only mall where Floyd drew his final breaths, but Mayor Jacob Frey and many property and business owners oppose the idea of closing the area to all vehicles. Any final decisions remain a long way off.
In the meantime, businesses in the neighborhood are struggling and crime remains high.
Flowers urged authorities to provide more support for Black-owned businesses, housing, education and crime prevention to improve the local economy.
The shell of the 3rd Precinct police station, which was allowed to burn during the unrest in 2020, has been the subject of intense debate. The City Council last month voted to proceed with a plan to build a “Democracy Center” there that would house voter services and a community space.
The former chief of police has said he doesn’t regret the decision to abandon the structure.
The demise of defund the police
The slogan “Defund the Police” caught fire after Floyd’s death, but it never came to pass. While a majority of council members initially backed the idea, what appeared on the city ballot in 2021 was a more modest attempt to reimagine policing. Voters rejected it.
The police force lost hundreds of officers following the unrest. From nearly 900 in early 2020, the ranks fell to less than 600 as officers retired, took disability or went to work elsewhere. Staffing started to recover last year.
Officers are now back engaging with the community at George Floyd Square, which became a “no-go zone” for police immediately after Floyd’s death. Flowers acknowledged there have been “significant strides” in community-police relations.
Police Chief Brian O’Hara said his “officers are starting to heal.”
“I think they’re starting to be proud of what they do again, getting back to the reasons they got into this profession in the first place,” he told reporters last week.
Remaking policing
President Donald Trump’s administration moved Wednesday to cancel agreements to overhaul the police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky, both accused of widespread abuses.
Frey, the mayor, decried the timing of the announcement as “political theater” in the week before the anniversary of Floyd’s murder.
National reform advocates also denounced the administration’s move. But O’Hara and Frey pledged Minneapolis would move forward, with or without the White House. The police department is also operating under a consent decree with the Minnesota Human Rights Department.
The decree proposes addressing race-based policing and strengthening public safety by ensuring officers only use reasonable force, never punish or retaliate, and de-escalate conflicts when possible, among other aims.
The mayor and chief noted that Minneapolis got high marks in a report released Tuesday by a nonprofit that monitors various cities’ compliance with consent decrees.
Activists cautioned that Minneapolis has little to brag about.
“We understand that change takes time,” Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, said in a statement last week. “However, the progress being claimed by the city is not being felt in the streets.”
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Associated Press videographer Mark Vancleave contributed to this story.
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