<span class="field field–name-title field–type-string field–label-hidden">5 Years Later, How George Floyd’s Murder Has Impacted Police-Community Relations</span>
<span class="field field–name-uid field–type-entity-reference field–label-hidden"><span>Shelby Hawkins</span></span>
<span class="field field–name-created field–type-created field–label-hidden"><time datetime="2025-05-21T19:50:38-05:00" title="Wednesday, May 21, 2025 – 19:50" class="datetime">Wed, 05/21/2025 – 19:50</time>
</span>
<div class="clearfix text-formatted field field–name-body field–type-text-with-summary field–label-hidden field__item"><p>It’s been nearly five years since George Floyd was murdered.</p>
<p>The 46-year old Black father of five was arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill at a Minneapolis convenience store, prompting one of four police officers on the scene to kneel on Floyd’s neck and back for more than nine minutes, asphyxiating him.</p>
<p>Nationwide protests erupted in the summer of 2020, a so-called racial reckoning, shortly after a video of the killing surfaced online. Residents took to the streets demanding systemic change to policing and the prison system.</p>
<p>While some police departments have enacted reforms, that progress is now threatened under the Trump administration’s agenda to retract Biden-era initiatives.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that <a href="https://ift.tt/j9gEJsn" target="_blank">it would do away with federal oversight of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville</a> and began the process of dismissing investigations in those cities and others — going back on previous DOJ findings about alleged constitutional violations from police departments.</p>
<p>Chicago’s <a href="https://ift.tt/QOYlEFb" target="_blank">consent decree</a> will remain intact as it doesn’t involve the DOJ.</p>
<p>Some locals, like University of Chicago law professor Craig Futterman, worry about what precedent is being set by top officials.</p>
<p>“I am concerned on a national level,” said Futterman, who founded the Civil Rights and Police Accountability clinic. “What’s happening in the rest of the country cannot happen here, but it sends a message that people elsewhere will not be protected.”</p>
<p>Futterman noted that while progress for police reform has been slow in Chicago, progress has been made — particularly as it relates to violence prevention.</p>
<p>“The police are killing far fewer people than what we saw 10 years ago,” according Futterman, who said there’s a need for systemic changes — like eradicating “a culture of denial and secrecy” that allows officers to abuse the most vulnerable.</p>
<p><a href="https://ift.tt/opgwfLN" target="_blank">GoodKids MadCity</a> founder Kofi Ademola is pushing for funds allocated to policing to be reallocated to community-based violence-prevention groups like the one he runs.</p>
<p>“Our system is dysfunctional and impunitive and racist,” said Ademola. “We need to tear down systems of incarceration and build systems that actually hold people accountable.”</p>
<p>From growing up as a teenager in the 1990s to being an adult who helps lead today’s youth, Ademola thinks stereotypes that paint young Black people as inherently violent have remained constant throughout the decades.</p>
<p>“We have to address that law enforcement and the prison industrial complex contribute to violence,” Ademola said.</p>
<p>Austin’s Police District (15th) has been cultivating partnerships with the community for the last few decades, especially at <a href="https://ift.tt/uO7ek1n" target="_blank">BUILD</a>.</p>
<p>Bradly Johnson, chief community officer of the West Side-based violence-prevention organization, helps cultivate those relationships while teaching “know your rights” workshops to young people in Chicago.</p>
<p>“Seeing the George Floyd video hurt me because I saw myself, I saw my son, I saw the young people that I work with and that impacted me greatly,” said Johnson.</p>
<p>The Austin native believes things have changed for the better since the summer of 2020 but doesn’t necessarily think people’s hearts or prejudicial sentiments have shifted much.</p>
<p>“The mentality of seeing people as animals has not changed so that’s a re-education that has to happen,” said Johnson. “This is a national issue: the culture of policing.”</p>
<p>One former Chicago police chief emphasized that the discourse is not as simple as Black people versus systems of incarceration because some individuals live in both identities.</p>
<p>Ernest Cato is a 32-year Chicago Police Department veteran who said he tried to bridge the long-fraught divide.</p>
<p>“It’s a tricky position, but my life prepared me for it,” said Cato. “I had an idea of what folks felt like because of the community I came from, and I also knew I had a job to do. The difficult part was bringing them both together.”</p>
<p>Momentum from the 2020 protests spurred a cross-ideological effort to pass reforms, pushing Democrats in Congress to draft the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which remains stagnant.</p>
<hr>
</div>
<div class="field field–name-field-top-level-terms field–type-entity-reference field–label-hidden field__items">
<div class="field__item"><a href="/crime-law" hreflang="en">Crime & Law</a></div>
</div>
Media Feeds All
May 21, 2025 at 07:56PM
Illinois Delivered 