Pressure mounts for US officers to be charged with murder of unarmed black man

Bridgett Floyd, George’s sister, told ABC’s Good Morning America programme on Wednesday that she feels “those guys need to be put in jail”.

“They murdered my brother,” she said.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey echoed those calls in a news conference on Wednesday, asking: “Why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail?”

He added: “If you had done it, or I had done it, we would be behind bars right now.”

‘I can’t breathe’

Floyd died at the hospital late on Monday after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on the 46-year-old’s neck for several minutes as Floyd moaned and yelled: “I can’t breathe.”

A video of the incident shows Floyd pleading with police and eventually appearing motionless as the officer’s knee remained on his neck. Bystanders can be heard urging the officer to get off of Floyd.

Medaria Arradondo, the city’s first Black police chief, swiftly fired the four officers involved, a move community leaders acknowledged as “a win”, but said should only be the first step.

“I don’t want to undermine how big of a win it was to Chief Arradondo to fire those four officers the same day the footage was shown to the public,” the NAACP’s Redmond said, highlighting that while it was only one officer who pinned Floyd to the ground “all of them were responsible and played a role”.

“The next step,” Redmond said, was criminal charges being brought against the four officers – identified by local media as Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J Alexander Kueng.

“What we are seeing is a violation of Black people’s human rights,” Redmond said. “Our humanity has always been denied on American soil.”

The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, which will handle the case, said in a statement it was “shocked and saddened by what appeared in a recent video”.

It added that after the BCA and FBI present their findings, it will make a decision on prosecution.

“We promise a thorough, expedited review consistent with our ongoing commitment to justice,” the statement read. “Every person is entitled to fairness; no person stands above the law.”

Redmond said other Black leaders are pushing for resources to be poured into the community and for police officers to be trained by community members to help bridge the disconnect she says has long existed.

New security camera footage

The Minneapolis Police Department said on Tuesday Floyd “physically resisted officers”.

Security camera footage, obtained by CBS News, shows Floyd sitting on the ground with his hands behind his back and then walking with police out of frame.

“Security cameras captured moments before the murder of #GeorgeFloyd,” tweeted prominent civil rights lawyer, Benjamin Crump, who is representing the Floyd family. “He was clearly NOT RESISTING arrest… So WHY did Minneapolis Police officers use excessive force that ultimately resulted in his death?! WE DEMAND ANSWERS.”

It is unclear what happens between the time Floyd and police walk out of the frame and the time when a bystander’s video shows an officer pinning Floyd down to the ground with his knee.

The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis issued a statement on Tuesday, saying its officers were cooperating with investigators and urged “now is not the time to rush to judgement”.

‘No justice, no peace’

Calls for justice for Floyd have reverberated across the country, with hundreds of protesters taking their demands to the streets of Minneapolis.

On Tuesday night, demonstrators filled the intersection where Floyd was pinned down, chanting “I can’t breathe” and “no justice, no peace”. Floyd’s death has been compared to that of Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man who died in 2014 after being placed in a chokehold by New York City police and pleading: “I can’t breathe.”

Video from Tuesday’s demonstration showed police using tear gas against some protesters who marched to a police precinct. There were also reports of non-lethal projectiles being fired by police. Authorities said some protesters destroyed a window of the precinct and sprayed graffiti on police vehicles.

US President Donald Trump publicly addressed Floyd’s death for the first time on Wednesday afternoon, calling it a “very sad event”.

“We’re going to look at it, and we’re going to get a report tomorrow when we get back. And we’re going to get a very full report,” Trump said during a visit to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “But a very sad day.”

Floyd’s death comes on the heels of several recent cases of a Black man or women being killed by police or former law enforcement.

The FBI are also involved in recent investigations in Louisville, Kentucky, and Glynn County, Georgia.

In Kentucky, 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by police on March 13 as they served a warrant in a drug investigation. Police said they were returning fire from Taylor’s boyfriend, who said he fired in self-defence, believing someone was breaking into the apartment. No drugs were found.

In Georgia, the US Justice Department is weighing hate crime charges in the February 23 shooting death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man killed while running in a predominantly white neighbourhood. It took more than two months and a viral video for police to arrest Gregory McMichael, a retired investigator for the local prosecutor’s office, and his son, Travis, both of whom are white. The McMichaels claimed they believed Arbery was involved in a burglary and he was shot in a struggle for Travis McMichael’s gun. Arbery’s mother said she believes her son was just going on a jog.

According to the Washington Post Fatal Force database, more than 1,000 people have been shot and killed by police in the last year. According to the database, Black Americans are killed by police at a disproportionate rate.

African American adults are nearly six times as likely to be imprisoned or jailed than white adults, according to the Sentencing Project watchdog group.

These racial disparities have given rise to Black Lives Matter, which was founded in 2013 and seeks to end police violence and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities.