The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to approve a pre-trial settlement with the family of a 46-year-old whose homicide by one of its police officers was caught on camera and outraged the nation, sparking protests worldwide.
The $27 million award to the family of George Floyd comes as jury selection continues for officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.
Attorney Ben Crump, who has represented the family, filing suit last June, announced that $500,000 from the settlement will go towards helping neighborhood businesses around 38th and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, where George was killed, and to tend the memorial that sprung up there.
“This historic agreement, the largest pre-trial settlement in a civil rights wrongful death case in U.S. history, makes a statement that George Floyd’s life mattered and by extension that Black lives matter,” said Crump.
George’s sister, Bridgett Floyd, said, “While our hearts are broken, we are comforted in knowing that even in death, George Floyd showed the world how to live.”
The family’s attorney argued that the city had been negligent for failing to properly train police and not firing officers like Chauvin, who had dozens of complaints previously been filed against him during his 19-year tenure.
The other three officers who were on the scene with Chauvin in May 2020, are due to go on trial later this year on charges of aiding and abetting the reckless cop in Floyd’s death.
Source: GNN
