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On March 12, city officials in Minneapolis announced that they had agreed to a $27 million settlement with the family of George Floyd.
The United States has yet to offer any sort of reparations or reconciliation for the Black, brown, and Indigenous communities that have suffered the most from colonization and this country’s militarized, racialized, classist approach to law enforcement.
The settlement itself was not a surprise, as multimillion-dollar payouts to the relatives of those killed or otherwise harmed by police officers have become common; more than half a billion dollars has been paid out in police misconduct cases in Chicago in the last decade alone.
In the months after Floyd’s murder, journalist Christina Carrega reported on these payments for ABC News, referencing the significant amount of police-settlement-related funds collected from taxpayers in New York City, home of the nation’s largest police force. “During fiscal year 2019,” she wrote, “the city paid out $175.9 million in civil judgments and claims for police-related lawsuits—not including settlements made with the city’s comptroller’s office.”
Carrega’s ABC report identifies these payouts as a “hidden cost” of police misconduct, as they require cities to simply patch over the bad behavior with tax dollars.
It is completely understandable that people who have been harmed by the police would seek out and accept large settlements from the municipal entities that hire and fund the officers in the first place. This is especially true for people of color, including Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who died at the hands of the police.
The United States has yet to offer any sort of reparations or reconciliation for the Black, brown, and Indigenous communities that have suffered the most from colonization and this country’s militarized, racialized, classist approach to law enforcement.
In the absence of any sort of formal acknowledgement of the violence and genocidal legacies of this nation, it seems we will be seeing—and paying for—many more traumatic episodes of violence by the police.
In Minneapolis, the settlement with George Floyd’s family was announced on a Friday afternoon, just days after the March 8 start of former police officer Derek Chauvin’s criminal trial.
Chauvin is the officer seen pinning his knee on Floyd’s neck during an attempted arrest, leading to Floyd’s death and Chauvin’s subsequent trial on murder and manslaughter charges.
On one hand, what has happened to Chauvin is a slight sign of progress in the movement for greater police accountability. He was fired immediately after Floyd’s death, along with the other three officers implicated in the incident, and was not allowed to enter a plea deal rather than face a criminal trial.
On the other hand, Chauvin himself will not be shelling out any of his own money to pay for his defense. Instead, his attorney fees and other related trial expenses will be paid for through the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, as journalist Samantha Michaels has noted.
Being able to sidestep any personal financial responsibility for criminal cases is yet another way police violence gets swept under the rug, according to Michaels’s recent article for Mother Jones.
The $27 million payout to Floyd’s family could be seen as an acknowledgement of the way we, collectively, have learned to cover up, rather than confront, the violence that surrounds us. Instead of waiting for the criminal trial to play out, Minneapolis officials reached an agreement with the Floyd family and held a news conference to publicize it. (This announcement prompted calls, which were not granted, for a delay in the proceedings against Chauvin.)
The city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, who is running for re-election this year, called the settlement a “milestone in shaping a more just future” for Minneapolis.
At the same time, Frey and Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arrodondo have struggled to reach an agreement with community members over whether or not the South Minneapolis intersection where Floyd died should be reopened to traffic.
The intersection, closed since Floyd’s death, has been renamed George Floyd Square. While some activists feel strongly that the area should remain an autonomous zone, a contingent of citizens and local business owners have complained about feeling unsafe and unprotected.
Arradondo’s response has been to partner with the FBI on public safety efforts, partly because gun violence in and around George Floyd Square has risen sharply in recent months.
And so the cycle of violence keeps spinning. Instead of addressing the root causes of police misconduct, we seem destined to endure more of the same.