FIVE MEN MEET ON A MINNEAPOLIS STREET
On Monday evening, May 25t, George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American, entered Cup Foods, a convenience store and delicatessen in South Minneapolis, to purchase cigarettes. He gave the clerk a $20 bill, took his purchase and change and returned to his SUV, which was parked across the street. He would never return home.
Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Floyd had moved with his family to Houston where he starred in football and basketball for his high school. Convicted in 2009 of an armed robbery, he served a five-year sentence in prison. When released from prison, he moved to Minneapolis for a fresh start. He worked as a truck driver in the day and in nightclub security in the evenings, his 6’7” stature making a formidable presence. He had contracted and recovered from COVID19 in April. The pandemic led to layoffs from both of his jobs.
Two clerks in the convenience store believed the $20 bill was counterfeit and left the store to approach Floyd’s vehicle to demand a return of the cigarettes and change. Upon his refusal, they returned to the store where a 17-year-old who had worked at the store for six months decided, against company policy, to call 911. The store’s owner insisted that 911 should only be called in the event of threatened violence.
The Washington Post released a detailed video reconstruction of this tragedy on May 30.
The first two police officers arrived in the same car. Officers J. Alexander Kueng, 26, and Thomas Lane, 37, had joined the Minneapolis Police Department as cadets in early 2019. With difficulty, they extracted Floyd from his SUV, handcuffed him and placed him seated against a building.
At this point, Officer Derek Chauvin, 44, former M.P. and 18-year veteran of the police department arrived with 34-year-old Officer Tau Thao, an eightyear veteran of the department.
The four struggled to place Floyd in the back of a police car. He fell or was wrestled to the ground in a prone position. Chauvin knelt with his left knee pressed against the right side of Floyd’s neck, maintaining this position for eight minutes, 45 seconds, despite early pleas from Floyd that he could not breath. Pressure at this location would impair circulation to the brain and air movement to the lungs. Pleas from onlookers were ignored. During this interval, Kueng applied pressure to Floyd’s back, while Lane restrained Floyd’s legs. Floyd was motionless and not breathing by the time an ambulance arrived although he was not pronounced dead until his arrival at a hospital’s emergency room.
An independent autopsy concluded that Floyd died of “asphyxiation from sustained pressure” applied to his neck and back.
The four policemen were fired the next day. Chauvin was arrested on third-degree murder and manslaughter charges on May 29. The charges were raised to second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter on June 3. The other three officers were arrested that day and charged with aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter.
Protests began in Minneapolis as soon as video recordings of Floyd’s death were released. Protests spread to scores of other cities and towns across the U.S. Some early protests were accompanied by vandalism, tear gas, rubber bullets, and physical confrontations between police and other law enforcers and protesters.
I present this detailed account of this staggering tragedy because it places us at a crossroads in our history. One road leads to an authoritarian future with little restraint on how law enforcement officials may behave. Racism is not addressed along this road. The other road is more difficult but leads to a future when we may finally address, through democratic processes, prejudice in all of its forms. The welcoming sign at this destination states: “Welcome! All lives matter here!”
The closing stanza of Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, is relevant to this moment:
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Contact Clif Cleaveland at ccleaveland@timesfreepress.com.