Incredibly or not, the slaughter of black men at the hands of law enforcement officers continues, with the latest transgression occurring on Memorial Day in Minneapolis when four police officers were involved in the killing of black man who died in police custody. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey took swift action, firing the four officers on Tuesday announcing on Twitter that “This is the right call.”
“Being Black in America should not be a death sentence. For five minutes, we watched a white officer press his knee into a Black man’s neck. Five minutes. When you hear someone calling for help, you’re supposed to help. This officer failed in the most basic, human sense,” Frey posted.
A bystander’s video showed an officer kneeling on the handcuffed man’s neck, even after he pleaded that he could not breathe and then stopped moving. The victim, who was later identified as 46-year-old George Floyd, a security guard at a restaurant subsequently died in custody.
Floyd’s death Monday night is under investigation by the FBI and state law enforcement authorities. It immediately drew comparisons to the case of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died in 2014 in New York after he was placed in a chokehold by police and pleaded for his life, saying he could not breathe.
