George Floyd’s family raised $ 27 million from the city of Minneapolis. A record figure, one of the largest in a case of police misconduct. The city council unanimously approved the plea deal and now, the family of the forty-six-year-old African American, hopes that justice will take its course and recognize the responsibility of the agents in his death.
The agreement comes, in fact, while the selection of the jury called to express itself on Derek Chauvin, the former agent who caused Floyd’s death, is in progress, pressing a knee on his neck which prevented him from breathing for a very long 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
And it is not excluded that the agreement could affect the process: according to some observers, in fact, it is a potential disaster for Chauvin unless his lawyer requests the cancellation of the procedure. The chosen or potential jurors could be influenced by the record plea bargain, reading it as a kind of admission of responsibility and guilt.
At the moment, according to rumors, six jurors have already been selected: five men – three white, one Hispanic and one African American – and one woman. As part of the agreement, an allocation of $ 500,000 is also envisaged for the community in the area where Floyd was killed by Chauvin last May.
The repeated pleas of the victim, crushed by the weight of the agent, had no effect: whose cry of pain “I can’t breath”, I can’t breathe, has become the symbol of the struggle of the activists of Black Lives Matter and of the whole African American community. All for a counterfeit $ 20 bill that “Big Floyd”, nearly two meters tall, had given to a shop assistant.
The affair caused one of the largest waves of protest in the United States, with demonstrations that went on for weeks in major American cities, and with Floyd becoming a real member of the Black Lives Matter movement. Demonstrations that now worry Minneapolis ahead of the expected trial which is expected to last three weeks, the final hearings should begin on March 29. A deadline for which the city is preparing itself for fear of new violence.