Minneapolis (AP) – Some things have changed for the best in Minneapolis from the Memorial Day 2020, when a policeman George Floyd murdered. Some have not done so.
Sunday marked five years since the white officer Derek Chauvin used his knee to pin the neck of the black man at the sidewalk for 9 1/2 minutes, which resulted in his death.
A raz of racial justice protests broke out in American cities. The demonstrators sang Floyd’s dying words: “I can’t breathe.” The demonstrations were mostly peaceful at the start, but some became violent, and some parts of Minneapolis have not yet recovered riots, looting and the criminal fire. And the city is still struggling to decide what should become of the intersection where Floyd was killed.
The Minneapolis police service has faced changes under the surveillance of the courts which aim to reduce racial disparities. Violent crimes, which increased during the cocovid-19 pandemic and after the death of Floyd, is mainly back to pre-pale levels, although homicides are moving.
A place of pilgrimage
The intersection where a host of spectators concerned urged Chauvin and other officers to take into account the dying cries of Floyd quickly became known as the name of George Floyd Square.
A large sculpture of a tight fist is just one of the tributes to Floyd. He died a few steps from the Cup Foods convenience store which has since been renamed Unity Foods. The region attracts visitors from around the world.
A visitor last week was Alfred “AJ” Flowers Jr., a local activist, who declared that the police murders of young black men before the murder of Floyd only drew up the frustration and the rage that broke into the street five years ago.
It is important that the black community tends to meet in “places where we die, whether in our own hands or by police violence,” said Flowers.
The fate of George Floyd Square
The majority of members of the municipal council support the construction of a pedestrian shopping center where Floyd inspired its latest breaths, but mayor Jacob Frey and many owners of properties and businesses oppose the idea of closing the area to all vehicles. All final decisions remain far away.
Waiting for, neighborhood companies are in difficulty and crime remains high.
Flowers have urged the authorities to provide more support to companies belonging to blacks, housing, education and crime prevention to improve the local economy.
The shell of the 3rd district police station, which was authorized to burn during the troubles in 2020, was the subject of an intense debate. The municipal council voted last month to carry out a plan to build a “center of democracy” which would house the voter services and a community space.
THE former police chief said he does not regret the decision to abandon the structure.
The disappearance of finance the police
The slogan “Funded the police” caught fire after Floyd’s death, but he never passed. While a majority of council members initially sustained The idea, what appeared on the city’s ballot in 2021, was a more modest attempt to reinvent the police. The voters rejected it.
The police have lost hundreds of officers following the troubles. From almost 900 at the beginning of 2020, the ranks fell within 600 while the police retired, took a handicap or went to work elsewhere. The staff began recovering last year.
The police are now back with the community of George Floyd Square, who has become an “area without Go” for the police immediately after the death of Floyd. Flowers have recognized that there have been “significant progress” in community-political relations.
Police chief Brian O’Hara said his “police officers were starting to heal”.
“I think they are starting to be proud of what they are doing again, to return to the reasons why they have entered this profession in the first place,” he told journalists last week.
Notice the police
The administration of President Donald Trump moved Wednesday to cancel the agreements to revise the police in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky, both accused of generalized abuse.
Frey, the mayor, denounced the announcement calendar as a “political theater” the week before the birthday of Floyd.
The defenders of the national reform also denounced the administration’s decision. But O’hara And Frey promised Minneapolis move forward, with or without the White House. The police service also works As part of a consent decree with Minnesota Human Rights Department.
The decree proposes to process the police based on race and to strengthen public security by ensuring that agents do not use a reasonable force, do not punish or never retaliate, and defuse conflicts when possible, among other objectives.
The mayor and the chief noted that Minneapolis had obtained high notes in a Report published Tuesday By a non -profit organization which monitors the conformity of various cities with consent decrees.
The activists warned that Minneapolis had little to boast.
“We understand that the change takes time,” said Michelle Gross, president of UNITED Communities against police brutality, in a statement last week. “However, the progress affirmed by the city is not felt in the streets.”
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The associated press videographer, Mark Vancleave, has contributed to this story.
