After George Floyd: June 2020

• Author: Kent Roach
• Pages: 15-24

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After George Floyd: June 2020

INTRODUCTION

On  May , Minneapolis police ocer Derek Chauvin murdered

GeorgeFloyd by holding his knee on the forty-six-year-old Black man’s neck

for more than eight minutes, including almost two minutes aer Floyd, who

was alleged to have purchased cigarettes with a counterfeit  bill, stopped

breathing. All four ocers involved with the arrest were quickly red from

the department and charged with murder. One of the ocers, Derek Chau-

vin, has been convicted of second-degree murder. George Floyd became a

household name and a rallying cry in massive protests. e same cannot be

said about the forty-eight Black men who have died in encounters with the

Canadian police or the eighty-nine Indigenous people who have died in

encounters with the police since .

ere is a smug sense among many Canadians that Canada does not face

the same magnitude of policing or other related problems as does the United

States. e month aer Floyd’s murder, however, should have removed this

sense of complacency. It should have established that Canadian policing

needs to change.

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Aer a three-year investigation, British Columbia’s Independent Investiga-

tions Oce (IIO) announced on  June  that two RCMP ocers should

be charged with excessive use of force and three others with obstruction

of justice in relation to the  death of thirty-ve-year-old Dale Culver,