Compensate “I can’t breath” | The paper

The City of Minneapolis unanimously approved the $ 27 million transaction to George Floyd’s family, the man killed on May 25 last year by Derek Chauvin. a police officer who immobilized and suffocated him by keeping his knee on his neck. Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit $ 20 bill with which he had just bought a pack of cigarettes: on the ground, immobilized, Floyd repeated “I can’t breathe”, I can’t breathe, which in the following days and months is became the tragic slogan of a protest against police brutality, especially to the detriment of the African American population, which involved all of America. The compensation approved by the municipality of Minneapolilis – which also includes $ 500,000 that will be given to the community in the area where Floyd lived – is the largest ever given to a victim of police violence. These are the so-called exemplary or punitive damages, they serve to send a very clear message to a city or a community: you are all responsible, not only those who used violence, but the system itself that allowed such conduct to be allowed. In 2019, Minneapolis had compensated the family of Justine Ruszczyk, an unarmed woman killed by police after calling 911 to report a possible crime happening behind her home. Justine was white, the city paid $ 20 million. In these days the trial has opened against Chauvin and the four agents who were with him when he killed Floyd. There is great tension and great expectation with regard to the trial, a showdown that affects the whole of America which in the last year has been torn between the streets, institutions, movements to abolish the police. The wait is certainly on the sentence but also on the new Biden Administration: Trump did nothing to try to heal this wound.