George Floyd Square. This south Minneapolis intersection remains barricaded as a makeshift memorial to the memory of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed in the street by a police officer during an arrest. Soon after Floyd’s death, people left memorials to him and transformed the space with public art honoring him and expressing racial justice themes.
History’s largest pretrial civil rights settlement
MINNEAPOLIS – The City Council agreed to pay $27 million to George Floyd’s family over the Black man’s death in police custody. The settlement was the largest pretrial settlement ever for a civil rights claim, according to the Floyd family attorney Ben Crump. Meanwhile, across town, jury selection continued in the trial of the police officer who held his knee on Floyd’s neck and killed him last May. Before announcing the settlement, he City Council met privately to discuss the details of the award, and then returned to open session and unanimously approved the $27 million. The settlement includes $500,000, presumably for a memorial in the south Minneapolis neighborhood where Floyd died.
Verbatim
Ben Crump, Floyd family attorney: “It’s going to be a long journey to justice. This is just one step on the journey to justice. This makes a statement that George Floyd deserved better than what we witnessed on May 25, 2020, that George Floyd’s life mattered, and that by extension, Black lives matter.”