George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter Gianna looked on quizzically while her mother gave a heart wrenching description of what the death of her father would mean throughout the child’s life.
Piled on top of the pandemic, 40,000,000 people unemployed, Black people dying at three times the rate of White people, the murder of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American woman in her own home and the hunting down of Ahmaud Arbery, the execution of George Floyd lit a keg of powder that was overdue to explode.
Although no unarmed Black person is exempt from excessive use of force, it is shameful that the death of an unarmed Black woman just does not receive the same attention from the public, the police or the media.
The dueling autopsy reports do nothing to dispel the horror of Derrick Chauvin’s knee and body weight pressed onto George Floyd’s neck, but the preliminary reports confirm the commonsense conclusion that the cause of his death was homicide.
Perhaps if Minneapolis had been subject to a pattern or practice investigation of discriminatory practices, no officer would have dared to brutalize Mr. Floyd.
