-Darshini Arunachalam
The George Floyd protests are an ongoing series of protests and riots against police brutality that began as local protests in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota before spreading throughout the United States and then worldwide. The protests began in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020,[7] following the killing of George Floyd, in which Minneapolis Police Department officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for over eight minutes after pinning the handcuffed man to the ground during an arrest.
On May 25, 2020, at 8:08 p.m. MPD officers responded to a 9-1-1 call regarding a "forgery in progress" on Chicago Avenue South in Powder horn, Minneapolis. According to police, George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, was in a nearby car and "appeared to be under the influence." A spokesman for the police department said the officers ordered him to exit the vehicle, at which point he "physically resisted." A video taken by a bystander shows Floyd being removed from his vehicle without any resistance.
According to the MPD, officers "were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance." However, a Facebook Live livestream recorded by a bystander showed that Derek Chauvin, a 48-year-old white police officer, had pinned Floyd on the ground and was kneeling on his neck.
Floyd repeatedly tells Chauvin "Please" and "I can't breathe”. After some time, a bystander points out that Floyd was bleeding from his nose while another bystander tells the police that Floyd is "not even resisting arrest right now," to which the police tell the bystanders that Floyd was "talking, he's fine." A bystander then protests that the police were preventing Floyd from breathing, urging them to "get him off the ground, you could have put him in the car by now. He's not resisting arrest or nothing."
Floyd then goes silent and motionless. An ambulance arrives and Chauvin does not remove his knee until emergency medical services put Floyd on a stretcher. Not only had Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for about seven minutes (including four minutes after Floyd stopped moving) but another video showed an additional two officers had also knelt on Floyd while another officer watched.
Medics were unable to detect a pulse, and Floyd was pronounced dead at the hospital. An autopsy of Floyd was conducted on May 26, and the next day, the preliminary report by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office was published, stating "no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation."
Floyd's underlying health conditions included coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The initial report said that "the combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.” The medical examiner further said Floyd was "high on fentanyl and had recently used methamphetamine at the time of his death”.
However, on June 1, a private autopsy commissioned by the family of Floyd ruled the death a homicide and found that Floyd had died due to asphyxiation from sustained pressure, which conflicts with the original autopsy report done earlier that week. Shortly after, the official post-mortem declared Floyd's death a homicide.