Four Minneapolis police officers were fired on Tuesday after a video surfaced showing one of the officers kneeling on the neck of a black man who was crying out that he could not breathe. The man soon became unresponsive and was later pronounced dead.
George Floyd, 47, died at a local hospital on Monday after being arrested and pinned to the pavement outside of a convenience store where it was suspected that he used a fake $20 bill, the Star Tribune reports. Floyd was pinned by an officer on the neck for at least six minutes.
“I can’t breathe,” Floyd says several times in the nine-minute video, the left side of his face pressed to the street.
About four minutes into the video, he appears to become unconscious as bystanders plead with the police to check his pulse. Around six minutes and 30 seconds into the video – with the officer’s knee still on Floyd’s neck – an ambulance arrives. One officer in the video said Floyd had resisted arrest for 10 minutes. Security footage of a portion of his arrest does not show him resisting.
“Being black in America should not be a death sentence,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said, according to the Star Tribune. “For five minutes, we watched a white officer press his knee into a black man’s neck. Five minutes. When you hear someone calling for help, you’re supposed to help. This officer failed in the…
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