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Ahead of the November 8 midterms, FRANCE 24 takes you on a tour down the Mississippi River with a series of reports by Fanny Allard. The first of five episodes brings us to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by White police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020. His death ignited nationwide protests calling for police reform and an end to systemic racism. Two years later, has American policing been reformed?
In May 2020, Minneapolis became the symbol of US police violence following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a White officer.
Since then, at least four other unarmed Black men from the Minneapolis area have been killed by police.
Among them, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed during a traffic stop in April 2021. “See, he was light skinned and he still got profiled by the police,” said Daunte’s father, Aubry Wright. “If my son had blond hair and blue eyes he probably would still be living today.”
When Wright tried to get away from officers, Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran of the police force, fatally shot him. The officer, who claimed she mistook her gun for a taser, was found guilty of manslaughter.
Earlier this year, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights released a scathing report showing the Minneapolis police department had a pattern of racial discrimination.
In May, Joe Biden signed an executive order directing federal law enforcement agencies to revise use of force policies. It has one major flaw, according to critics: it doesn’t apply to the country’s 18,000 state and local agencies.
“Joe Biden came in off the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement. He met with George Floyd’s family,” said Trahern Crews, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota. “But he still hasn’t passed meaningful police accountability legislation. They need Black men to come out and vote. Well, Black men are saying ‘we need economic justice and we need the police to stop killing us’. So if you can ensure that, then we can vote for you. If not, then we’re gonna look in a different direction.”
Click on the video player above to watch the report by FRANCE 24’s Fanny Allard.
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