In an 89-page report that followed a more than two-year federal civil rights investigation, the Justice Department excoriated the Minneapolis police force as an agency that put officers and local residents at unnecessary risk, failed to act upon repeated warnings about biased behavior and countenanced the “systemic problems” that gave way to Floyd’s death in 2020.
The report’s release came a little more than three years after Floyd, a Black man, was filmed gasping for air while pinned down by Derek Chauvin, a White police officer in Minneapolis, on Memorial Day in 2020. Floyd’s death helped ignite nationwide protests over policing and social and racial injustice, and Chauvin was convicted of murder the following year.
The Justice Department launched its civil rights investigation immediately after he was convicted. Appearing Friday at a federal courthouse in Minneapolis, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the investigation’s results and depicted Floyd’s death not as an isolated episode, but instead a tragedy enabled by the deep-rooted issues within the Minneapolis police.
Many Minneapolis police officers were observed during the investigation acting properly, Garland said at the news conference. “But the patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible,” he said.
“As I told George Floyd’s family this morning, his death has had an irrevocable impact on the Minneapolis community, on our country and on the world,” Garland said. “His loss is still felt deeply by those who loved and knew him and by many who did not. George Floyd should be alive today.”
Garland said the Justice Department, the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis police had agreed in principle to negotiate toward a federal consent decree — a court-approved reform order that can be used to ensure changes within a local law enforcement agency.
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