Before George Floyd: A Minneapolis legacy of protest, policing and the long road to change
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Listen to MPR News senior editor Brandt Williams’ conversation with Minnesota Now host Nina Moini. The segment was produced by Aleesa Kuznetsov and Megan Burks. It was engineered by Alex Simpson.
Flames rising. Police officers retreating. A community trying to protect itself.
These scenes may evoke the chaos following George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020. But they also describe what happened nearly two decades earlier, on Aug. 22, 2002, in north Minneapolis. That summer, community outrage erupted after a white Minneapolis police officer shot and wounded an 11-year-old Black boy.
“It came at a time when tensions were already high,” reported MPR News’ Brandt Williams in 2002. “An angry, predominantly Black crowd gathered and accused the police of targeting African Americans.”
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That unrest, like the one in 2020, drew the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice. But for longtime observers like Williams — who began covering the city in 1992 for the Black-owned “Insight News” — the story of police-community tensions in Minneapolis began long before Floyd's name became a rallying cry.
A pattern of protest and pain
Williams, now MPR News’ senior editor for race, class and communities, says the events of 2002 stayed with him. “It elicited protests, calls for action and federal intervention,” he said. “And this is one of the incidents I kept thinking about in May of 2020.”
For those outside Minneapolis, Floyd’s death seemed like a singular, shocking event. But local advocates had long warned the city was on the brink.
Attorney and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, speaking to MPR News in 2014 after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., issued a warning.
“Unless and until we shift the paradigm… something like Ferguson absolutely could happen here.”
Six years later, it did.
What made Floyd’s murder different
Two factors propelled Floyd’s murder into global consciousness: it was captured on video, and it happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when much of the world was at home, watching.
The footage recorded by then-teenager Darnella Frazier, showed Floyd’s final moments as then officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.
“It was raw. It was an eyewitness account,” Williams said. “It was our only evidence at the time, since police issued a press release that did not tell the whole story.”
Floyd’s death was not the first to be recorded and widely shared. In 2016, Diamond Reynolds livestreamed the aftermath of her boyfriend Philando Castile’s fatal shooting by a police officer in Falcon Heights. That video, while powerful, did not show the shooting itself. And though the officer, Jeronimo Yanez, was charged, a jury acquitted him.
But both videos — and the rise of smartphones — changed how police violence was seen and understood by the public.
Protest as a tool for change
Public outrage didn’t start with Floyd either. In 2015, protestors took over the 4th Precinct in north Minneapolis for 10 days after the police killing of Jamar Clark, an unarmed Black man. Activists demanded prosecutions.
The officers were not charged. Then-Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said the officers’ use of force was justified and there wasn’t evidence Clark had been handcuffed at the time, as some witnesses claimed.
It wasn’t until 2017, when a Black officer, Mohamed Noor, shot and killed a white woman, Justine Ruszczyk, that a Minneapolis officer was convicted for an on-duty killing.
The case prompted new body-worn camera rules, but also stirred deep skepticism about whose lives the justice system values.
Building toward reform
The years leading up to Floyd’s death saw some modest changes in Minneapolis police department policies. MPD responded with the following:
A ban on “warrior-style” police training
Creation of community advisory boards
More attention to mental health crisis response
Civilian oversight efforts
Floyd’s murder marked a turning point
Calls to “defund the police” led to pledges — though not fully realized — to reshape public safety. The city created a new Office of Community Safety, with a commissioner to supervise the police chief, and invested in violence interruption programs.
A federal investigation by the Department of Justice followed. A state court-enforced agreement is expected to reshape the Minneapolis Police Department.
New killings, more video
Since 2020, more fatal police encounters have occurred. But the response by the city to release video, and at times fire officers, has come faster.
In 2021, Daunte Wright was shot by a Brooklyn Center officer during a traffic stop — while the Chauvin trial was still underway. The officer, Kimberly Potter, was quickly charged and convicted of manslaughter later that year. Potter had grabbed her gun instead of a Taser.
Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder and manslaughter. He also pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Floyd’s civil rights along with three officers who either helped hold Floyd down or kept bystanders away. Chauvin and Tou Thao are currently in prison. Two officers, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, are on supervised release after serving time.
In 2022, Minneapolis police killed Amir Locke during a no-knock warrant raid. Public pressure was followed by restrictions on that tactic.
It remains to be seen how the combination of public pressure, court-ordered reform and city leadership will improve trust between Minneapolis police and the people they serve.
Listen to the full conversation with the audio player above.
