The murder of George Floyd during his arrest by Minneapolis police officers on May 25, 2020, triggered protests and riots against systemic racism in the United States, including police brutality and other forms of violence. Since the initial national wave and peak towards the end of 2020, other incidents of police violence have drawn continued attention and lower intensity unrest in various parts of the country.
It was facilitated by the nationwide Black Lives Matter movement. Following the murder of Floyd, unrest broke out in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area on May 26, and quickly spread across the country and the world. Polls conducted in June 2020 estimated that between 15 million and 26 million people participated in the demonstrations in the United States, making them the largest protests in American history. It was also estimated that between May 26 and August 22, around 93 percent of protests were peaceful and nondestructive. According to several studies and analyses, the majority of protests were peaceful.
The unrest precipitated a national American cultural reckoning on topics of racial injustice. Public opinion of racism and discrimination quickly shifted in the wake of the protests, with significantly increased support of the Black Lives Matter movement and acknowledgement of institutional racism. The effects of American activism extended internationally, and multiple columnists began to refer to it as an international reckoning on racial issues in early June 2020.
Within Minneapolis, widespread property destruction and looting occurred, including a police station being overrun by demonstrators and set on fire, causing the Minnesota National Guard to be activated and deployed on May 28. After a week of unrest, over $500 million in property damage was reported in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area, with two deaths linked to the riots. Further unrest quickly spread throughout the United States, sometimes including rioting, looting, and arson. By early June, at least 200 American cities had imposed curfews, while more than 30 states and Washington, D.C., had activated over 62,000 National Guard personnel in response to unrest. By the end of June, at least 14,000 people had been arrested at protests. By June 2020, more than 19 people had died in relation to the unrest. According to a September 2020 estimate, arson, vandalism and looting caused about $1–2 billion in insured damage between May 26 and June 8, making this initial phase of the George Floyd protests the civil disorder event with the highest recorded damage in American history.
There was also a large concentration of unrest around Portland, Oregon, which led to the Department of Homeland Security deploying federal agents in the city in June 2020. The move was code named Operation Legend, after four-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was shot and killed in Kansas City. Federal forces were later deployed in other cities which faced unrest, including Kansas City and Seattle. More localized unrest reemerged in several cities following incidents involving police officers, notably following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which led to protests and riots in the city. The protests led to requests at the federal, state and municipal levels intended to combat police misconduct, systemic racism, qualified immunity and police brutality in the United States.
Background
Police brutality in the United States
Cases of fatal use of force by law enforcement officers in the United States, particularly against African Americans, have long led the civil rights movement and other activists to protest against the lack of police accountability in incidents involving excessive force. Many protests during the civil rights movement were a response to police brutality, including the 1965 Watts riots which resulted in the deaths of 34 people, mostly African Americans. The largest post-civil rights movement protest in the 20th-century was the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which were in response to the acquittal of police officers in using excessive force against Rodney King, an African-American man.
In 2014, the shooting of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, resulted in local protests and unrest and the killing of Eric Garner in New York City resulted in numerous national protests. After Eric Garner and George Floyd repeatedly said "I can't breathe" during their arrests, the phrase became a protest slogan against police brutality. In 2015, the killing of Freddie Gray by Baltimore police resulted in riots in the city and nationwide protests as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Several nationally publicized incidents occurred in Minnesota, including the 2015 killing of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis; the 2016 killing of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights; and the 2017 killing of Justine Damond. In 2016, Tony Timpa was killed by Dallas police officers in the same way as George Floyd. In March 2020, the killing of Breonna Taylor by police, potentially serving a no-knock warrant, at her Kentucky apartment was also widely publicized.
According to a database of every fatal shooting by an on-duty police officer in the United States compiled by The Washington Post, 18 unarmed black people were shot by police in 2020, as of May 2023. As of that date, the database lists four people of unknown race, 26 white people, 10 Hispanic people, one Asian person, and one Native American person who were shot while unarmed. Black people, who account for less than 13 percent of the American population, are killed by police at a disproportionate rate, being killed at more than twice the rate of white people.
According to a data set and analysis which was released by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) at the beginning of September, there were more than 10,600 demonstration events across the country between May 24 and August 22 which were associated with all causes: Black Lives Matter, counter-protests, COVID-19-pandemic-related protests, and others. After Floyd's murder, Black Lives Matter related protests sharply peaked in number at the end of May, declining to dozens per week by September. The ACLED characterized Black Lives Matter as "an overwhelmingly peaceful movement", finding that more than 93 percent of protests involved no incidents of violence nor destructive activity. Several other studies and analyses also found that the large majority of protests have been peaceful. In protests that were violent, violence was variously instigated by protesters, counter-protesters, or police, and police sometimes escalated violence. A September 2020 article in Axios reported that the vandalism and looting that did occur would result in at least $1 billion to $2 billion of paid insurance claims. The 2020 unrest cost the insurance industry far more than any prior incidents of social unrest.
At some protests, counter-protesters and right-wing infiltrators instigated or escalated violence. According to a Movement for Black Lives report, the US federal government targeted Black Lives Matter protesters during the summer of 2020 through increased police presence, the deployment of federal agents, the prosecution of protesters, and surveillance. According to Amnesty International's October 2020 report Losing the Peace: U.S. Police Failures to Protect Protesters from Violence, law enforcement agencies across the United States failed to protect protesters from violent armed groups. The incidents documented by Amnesty International show over a dozen protests and counter-protests erupted in violence with police either mostly, or entirely, absent from the scene. Amnesty International USA, jointly with the Center for Civilians in Conflict, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and Human Rights First, sent a letter to governors of US states condemning abuses by law enforcement agencies and calling on governors to ensure the constitutional right to assemble peacefully.
Killing of Breonna Taylor
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was fatally shot by Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove on March 13, 2020. Three plainclothes LMPD officers entered her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, executing a search warrant. Gunfire was exchanged between Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, and the officers. Walker said that he believed that the officers were intruders. The LMPD officers fired over twenty shots. Taylor was shot eight times and LMPD Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly was injured by gunfire. Another police officer and an LMPD lieutenant were on the scene when the warrant was executed.
The primary targets of the LMPD investigation were Jamarcus Glover and Adrian Walker, who were suspected of selling controlled substances from a drug house more than 10 miles (16 km) away. According to a Taylor family attorney, Glover had dated Taylor two years before and continued to have a "passive friendship". The search warrant included Taylor's residence because it was suspected that Glover received packages containing drugs at Taylor's apartment and because a car registered to Taylor had been seen parked on several occasions in front of Glover's house.
Kenneth Walker, who was licensed to carry a firearm, fired first, injuring a law enforcement officer, whereupon police returned fire into the apartment with more than 20 rounds. A wrongful death lawsuit filed against the police by the Taylor family's attorney alleges that the officers, who entered Taylor's home "without knocking and without announcing themselves as police officers", opened fire "with a total disregard for the value of human life." According to the police account, the officers did knock and announce themselves before forcing entry.
With officials, media and general public distracted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the police killing of Taylor initially largely escaped widespread scrutiny. However, Taylor's death became one of the most discussed and protested events of the broader movement.
Murder of George Floyd
On May 25, 2020, at 8:08 p.m. CDT, Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) officers responded to a 9-1-1 call alleging a "forgery in progress" on Chicago Avenue South in Powderhorn, Minneapolis. MPD Officers Thomas K. Lane and J. Alexander Kueng arrived with their body cameras turned on. A store employee told officers that the man was in a nearby car. Officers approached the car and ordered George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, who according to police "appeared to be under the influence", to exit the vehicle, at which point he "physically resisted". According to the MPD, officers "were able to get the suspect into handcuffs, and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance." Once Floyd was handcuffed, he and Officer Lane walked to the sidewalk. Floyd sat on the ground in Officer Lane's direction. In a short conversation, the officer asked Floyd for his name and identification, explaining that he was being arrested for passing counterfeit currency, and asked if he was "on anything". According to the report, officers Kueng and Lane attempted to help Floyd to their squad car, but at 8:14 p.m., Floyd stiffened up and fell to the ground. Soon, MPD Officers Derek Chauvin and Tou Thao arrived in a separate squad car. The officers made several more failed attempts to get Floyd into the squad car.
Floyd, who was still handcuffed, went to the ground face down. Officer Kueng held Floyd's back, and Lane held his legs. Chauvin placed his left knee in the area of Floyd's head and neck. A Facebook Live livestream recorded by a bystander showed officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck. Floyd repeatedly tells Chauvin "Please" and "I can't breathe", while a bystander is heard telling the police officer, "You got him down. Let him breathe." After some time, a bystander points out that Floyd was bleeding from his nose while another bystander tells the police that Floyd is "not even resisting arrest right now", to which the police tell the bystanders that Floyd was "talking, he's fine". A bystander replies saying Floyd "ain't fine". A bystander then protests that the police were preventing Floyd from breathing, urging them to "get him off the ground ... You could have put him in the car by now. He's not resisting arrest or nothing." Floyd then goes silent and motionless. Chauvin does not remove his knee until an ambulance arrives. Emergency medical services put Floyd on a stretcher. Not only had Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for about seven minutes (including four minutes after Floyd stopped moving), but another video showed an additional two officers had also knelt on Floyd while another officer watched.
Although the police report stated that medical services were requested prior to the time Floyd was placed in handcuffs, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Emergency Medical Services arrived at the scene six minutes after getting the call. Medics were unable to detect a pulse, and Floyd was pronounced dead at the hospital. An autopsy of Floyd was conducted on May 26, and the next day, the preliminary report by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office was published, which found "no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation". Floyd's underlying health conditions included coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease. The initial report said that "[t]he combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death." The medical examiner further said that Floyd was "high on fentanyl and had recently used methamphetamine at the time of his death".
On May 26, Chauvin and the other three officers were fired. He was charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter; the former charge was later changed to second-degree murder. On June 1, a private autopsy which was commissioned by the family of Floyd ruled that Floyd's death was a homicide and it also found that Floyd had died due to asphyxiation which resulted from sustained pressure, which conflicted with the original autopsy report which was completed earlier that week. Shortly after, the official post-mortem declared Floyd's death a homicide. Video footage of Officer Derek Chauvin applying 8 minutes 15 seconds of sustained pressure to Floyd's neck generated global attention and raised questions about the use of force by law enforcement.,
On June 3, Chauvin was charged with unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter related to the incident, and officers Kueng, Lane, and Thao were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. On April 20, 2021, Chauvin was found guilty of all charges by a 12-person grand jury. Two months later, on June 25, he was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. Officers Kueng, Thao, and Thomas entered a plea deal averting trial.
Major protests
Breonna Taylor protests, May 2020 – August 2022
On March 13, Breonna Taylor was shot and killed. Demonstrations over her death began on May 26, 2020, and lasted into August. One person was shot and killed during the protests.