charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The family
will receive $27 million, city officials said on Friday.
The City Council voted unanimously to approve the settlement, and a spokeswoman for the city said Mayor Jacob Frey would sign the measure.
The settlement was among the largest in a case of police misconduct and was announced as Derek Chauvin, the former officer who knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck, sat less than a mile away in a courtroom where jurors were being chosen for his trial. He has been charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
“This agreement is a necessary step for all of us to begin to get some closure,” Rodney Floyd, one of Mr. Floyd’s brothers, said of the settlement. “George’s legacy for those who loved him will always be his spirit of optimism that things can get better, and we hope this agreement does just that — that it makes things a little better in Minneapolis and holds up a light for communities around the country.”
Ben Crump, the civil rights lawyer who is among those representing Mr. Floyd’s family, said the settlement was the largest reached before trial in a civil rights wrongful death lawsuit. And that it came in a lawsuit over the death of a Black man, he said, “sends a powerful message that Black lives do matter and police brutality against people of color must end.”
The settlement follows several other large payments from cities after high-profile police killings, including a $12 million payout in September from Louisville, Ky., after officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, in her apartment last March.
Minneapolis had previously paid one of the largest settlements in a lawsuit over police misconduct in May 2019, when the city agreed to a $20 million settlement with the family of Justine Ruszczyk, a white yoga instructor who was fatally shot by Mohamed Noor, a Black Minneapolis police officer, in 2017.
Born in 1973, died in 2020, at age 46.
No comments:
Post a Comment