George Floyd death: ‘Stop the pain’, brother tells US Congress

I’m here today to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain. Stop us from being tired,” Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, the African American man whose death in Police custody inspired protests across the country, said at a congressional hearing on Wednesday.

In his emotional testimony at the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing titled “Policing Practices and Law Enforcement Accountability,” the younger Floyd urged the lawmakers to honour those from around the world calling for change in the wake of his brother’s death.

“Honour them, honour George and make the necessary changes that make law enforcement the solution and not the problem.”

“If his death ends up changing the world for the better, and I think it will, then he died as he lived. It is on you to make sure his death isn’t in vain,” said Floyd’s brother. Wednesday’s hearing came one day after Floyd was laid to rest, and two days after congressional Democrats introduced a piece of legislation seeking sweeping reforms to policing policies, which will make it easier to prosecute police misconduct cases and prevent excessive use of force by law enforcement. Democratic congresswoman Karen Bass, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus that led the drafting of the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, said in her opening statement that she hopes the bill will pass both chambers of Congress and become law, so that “we never, ever, ever see again what we saw a few weeks ago.”

Calling Police brutality “an embarrassment of our nation in front of the entire world,” Ms Bass said the Unites States, which oftentimes points its fingers to so-called human rights violations in other countries, should honour its own commitment to human rights.

“While we hold up human rights in the world, we obviously have to hold them up in our country.”

On May 25, Floyd, during the final moments of his life, was put in neck restraint for eight minutes and 46 seconds by a white Police officer in Minneapolis, even as he begged for his life.

Derek Chauvin, the now fired officer who kept his knee on Floyd’s neck, has been jailed and faces murder charges.

“I can’t tell you the kind of pain you feel when you watch something like that, when you watch your big brother, who you looked up to your whole entire life die, die begging for his mom,” Floyd’s brother said.