FLOYD FAMILY SETTLES SUIT AGAINST MINNEAPOLIS FOR $27M
Settlement one of the largest in a case of police misconduct
The city of Minneapolis agreed on Friday to pay $27 million to the family of George Floyd, the Black man whose death set off months of protests after a video showed a White police officer kneeling on his neck.
The payment to settle the family’s lawsuit was among the largest of its kind, and it came as the officer, Derek Chauvin, was set to go on trial this month for charges including second-degree murder. As the settlement was announced by city officials and lawyers for Floyd’s family, Chauvin sat in a courtroom less than a mile away, where jurors were being selected for his trial.
Mayor Jacob Frey called the agreement a milestone for the city’s future. Ben Crump, the civil rights lawyer who is among those representing Floyd’s family, said it could set an example for other communities.
“After the eyes of the world
rested on Minneapolis in its darkest hour, now the city can be a beacon of hope and light and change for cities across America and across the globe,” he said.
The large payment was a sign of the magnitude of the response to Floyd’s death, which led to protests in hundreds of cities, changes in local and state laws, and a reckoning over racism and police abuse. In Minneapolis, a police station and many businesses were burned over several nights of unrest.
At a news conference, Crump said the agreement would “allow healing to begin” in the city. He said the family had pledged to donate $500,000 to “lift up” the neighborhood around 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, the corner where the police confronted Floyd on May 25. The officers had arrived after a store clerk called 911 and said that Floyd had tried to pay with a fake $20 bill.
Frey said on Twitter that the agreement “reflects a shared commitment to advancing racial justice and a sustained push for progress.”
Some community members, however, were skeptical of his assertion.
“We haven’t even taken a step, let alone a mile, toward fundamentally changing this police force,” said D.A. Bullock, a filmmaker who lives in Minneapolis. “We’re just waiting for the next George Floyd to happen.”
Bullock said he imagined that Floyd’s family would return every penny if they could have him back.
“All I want to talk about is how we’re not going to have police out here killing Black folks,” he said. “That’s really my bottom line, regardless of the size of the settlement.”
Two years ago, Minneapolis agreed to pay $20 million to the family of Justine Ruszczyk, a White yoga instructor who was fatally shot by Mohamed Noor, a police officer who is Somali. Excluding that case, the agreement with the Floyd family is larger than the city’s combined settlements related to police misconduct from 2006 to 2020, according to city data.
Minneapolis pays its settlements out of a fund for legal payouts and workers’ compensation claims, and residents have expressed concern that their taxes are subsidizing payments for the misconduct of the police while failing to hold officers accountable. Activists have pushed for legislation that would require officers to carry their own liability insurance, with premiums that could rise after cases of misconduct.
Mark Ruff, the city coordinator, said during a news conference that with cash reserves, officials were confident that the Floyd agreement would not lead to an increase in property taxes.
The settlement reflected the rise in payments over police abuse and misconduct in recent years. In September, Louisville, Ky., agreed to pay $12 million to the family of Breonna Taylor, the Black woman whom officers shot and killed in her apartment a year ago.
Five years earlier, the family of Freddie Gray reached a $6.4 million settlement with Baltimore after he was fatally injured in police custody. Also in 2015, New York agreed to pay $5.9 million to the family of Eric Garner, who died after a police officer used a chokehold on him.
In some ways, the escalating amounts are indicative of growing public support for holding the police accountable, said Katherine Macfarlane, an associate professor of law at the University of Idaho who specializes in civil rights litigation. But it is also an issue of precedent, she said.
“I think that once you have an incrementally larger settlement, it becomes, in some way, precedent to ask for at least that,” she said. “It gives an attorney a way to say, ‘This is what’s been done before on similar facts, but this is even worse, so we should go above that.’”
Floyd’s family had sued Minneapolis in July, saying that the police had violated his rights and failed to properly train its officers or fire those who violated department policies.
Crump said on Friday that the settlement was the largest ever reached before trial in a civil rights wrongful death lawsuit involving the police. That it came in a lawsuit over the death of a Black man, he said, “sends a powerful message that Black lives do matter and police brutality against people of color must end.”
Some legal experts said the agreement might make it even harder to seat an impartial jury in the case against Chauvin, which was already a challenge because of the attention given to Floyd’s death and the intense demonstrations that followed. In the first four days of jury selection this week, nearly all of the potential jurors said they had seen the video of his arrest, including all but one of the seven selected for the trial so far.
Mary Moriarty, the former chief public defender in Minneapolis, said that the timing could hardly be worse for the court case and that Chauvin’s lawyers might even ask for a mistrial.
She added that the defense team might have reason to worry that jurors’ views could be affected by the deal, if they saw it as an indication that Chauvin’s actions were inappropriate. Chauvin’s lawyer and a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office, which is prosecuting the case, did not respond to requests for comment.
San Diego Unified officials say they are on track to meet their target reopening date of April 12, while details such as how much time students will spend in person at school have yet to be decided.
Those details will depend partly on results of a districtwide parent survey that closed on Friday night.
The district plans to reopen the week of April 12 for hybrid learning, meaning students will only be able to attend in person for part of the school day or week and will continue learning online for the rest of the time.
The district says hybrid learning is necessary to reduce the number of students on campus at a time, to allow for adequate social distancing.
The district survey asks parents whether they want their children to return to school for hybrid learning or whether they want to keep them home in distance learning. While many parents are itching for their students to go back to school, several parents, especially parents in disadvantaged neighborhoods, have said they want their students to stay home for their family’s safety.
“We’re confident that it will be a good experience for the kids who come back and will continue to be a … quality experience for the kids who stay home,” said San Diego Unified Board President Richard
Barrera at a media event Friday at the newly-rebuilt Hoover High School in City Heights.
Last year the Hoover campus finished a $47 million, bond-funded renovation, including a new classroom building with 20 classrooms, a 500-seat performing arts theater, a culinary arts facility and an expanded parking lot.
Meanwhile, as the county reaches the one-year school closure anniversary today, parents are raising pressure on school districts and the state to reopen schools now.