George Floyd Remembered In Virginia On Anniversary Of His Death

VIRGINIA — On the one-year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd at the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, people across Virginia and the country are remembering Floyd’s life and pledging to sustain pressure on leaders to enact comprehensive police reforms.

The killing of Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, ignited an unprecedented movement in U.S. history as hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life took to the streets to express their outrage and to call for an end to similar types of police misconduct in their own communities.

The campaign for justice for George Floyd spurred calls for police reform across the country. Floyd’s killing also led to a racial reckoning in Virginia, due in large part to the image of a white police officer kneeling on a Black man’s neck for more than nine minutes, snuffing out his life.

“A year ago today, the world watched as George Floyd was murdered under the knee of a police officer,” former Virginia Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy (D), who is running for governor of Virginia, said Tuesday. “In the year since the murder of George Floyd, Virginians, Americans and people across the globe have rightfully joined together to mourn, protest, and fight for accountability and justice.”

Even after a guilty verdict against Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, though, police in Virginia and across the country are still working as if nothing has changed in their operating procedures.

“From the shooting of Donovon Lynch and the assault of Lt. Caron Nazario, to those who have been hurt and harmed whose names never made the headlines, racial injustice still persists in our broken system,” Carroll Foy said.

“While true justice would mean still having George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more with us, the fight for real systemic change must continue,” she said.

Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is also seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, tweeted Tuesday that efforts to reform the state’s criminal justice system are far from over.

“One year after George Floyd’s murder, we are far from a criminal justice system that upholds our nation’s promise of equality for all,” McAuliffe stated. “It will take all of us to continue fighting for progress to create a justice system rooted in equity.”

Over the past year, police experts and policymakers have called for the demilitarization of local police forces and reducing the types of incidents to which police respond.

Virginia Del. Lee Carter of Manassas, who is vying for the Democratic nomination for governor, tweeted a quote of his in which he said: "The problem is we have too many police, too heavily armed, doing too many tasks."

Since the killing of Floyd, Virginia state lawmakers have passed some modest police reform bills. Police officers can no longer use a chokehold on a person unless it is “immediately necessary to protect the law-enforcement officer or another person.” The bill does not spell out how the police officer should be held accountable for using an illegal chokehold.

Lawmakers also passed a bill banning no-knock warrants, prohibiting police from serving search or arrest warrants without first knocking and announcing themselves.

“We’ve made significant progress in the past year on police and justice reform, due in no small part to the call of activists demanding change in the wake of Floyd’s murder," state Sen. Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond), who is running for governor, said in a statement Tuesday. "But there is so much more work to do to end the vicious cycle that has criminalized and killed Black and Brown Virginians for generations."

“As governor, comprehensive justice reform will be my clarion call," McClellan said. "I will end qualified immunity, mandate Civilian Review Boards, and create a new State Investigative Unit to hold law enforcement accountable when they violate their oath."

Along with signing criminal justice reform bills, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam stepped up his efforts to address the state’s long history of racism after Floyd’s killing.

In June 2020, Northam ordered the removal of the state-owned Robert E. Lee Monument on Richmond's Monument Avenue. Almost a year later, the monument still stands as supporters of the Lee statue fight in court to keep the monument in its current place.

While the Lee statue still stands, many other symbols celebrating the Confederacy have been taken down across the state since the death of George Floyd. Virginia officials removed 71 Confederate symbols in 2020, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Slow-Moving Police Reforms

The campaigns for police reform and holding police officers accountable in Virginia are moving far slower than the efforts to end government-sponsored celebrations of the Confederacy. Many believe the charges brought against the police officers in Minneapolis in the George Floyd case were an anomaly.

According to Mapping Police Violence, 7,666 police officers killed someone in the U.S. between 2013 and 2019. Mapping Police Violence defines a police killing as “a case where a person dies as a result of being shot, beaten, restrained, intentionally hit by a police vehicle, pepper sprayed, tasered, or otherwise harmed by police officers, whether on-duty or off-duty.”

Of the 7,666 cases, only 25 officers were convicted of a crime. In another 74 cases, the officers were charged with a crime but not convicted, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 99 percent of the cases, officers were not charged with any crime whatsoever.

“The conviction of Derek Chauvin for Floyd’s murder most likely occurred because the police department turned against the officer,” Southern Poverty Law Center President and CEO Margaret Huang wrote Tuesday on the one-year anniversary of Floyd’s killing.

Since a Minnesota jury found Chauvin guilty, the excessive use of force by police has not been quelled, according to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, which represents more than 3,000 top officials in the law enforcement community.

"Through the expediency of technology, whether from citizen recordings or at times through body or dashboard cameras of the officers involved, we continue to witness uncontrolled aggression, inappropriate escalation of use of force or clear lapses in basic apprehension protocols, which continue to lead to fatalities that could have been avoided," National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives President Lynda R. Williams said in a statement on the one-year anniversary of Floyd's death.

On Tuesday, state Del. Jay Jones of Norfolk, who is running for attorney general, called for Virginia to "recommit to fighting for accountability and transparency in policing."

"Virginia has been forced to grapple with our own instances of police violence since Floyd’s death," Jones said in a statement. "Just this March, Donovon Lynch was gunned down by police in Virginia Beach. And a month later, Isaiah Brown was shot ten times by an officer in Spotsylvania."

"We have a special moment in our country and in our Commonwealth," Jones wrote. "As we have a national conversation around the ways in which our justice system has systematically attacked Black and Brown communities, we can choose to elect leaders who will rise to the moment and fight to right centuries of wrongs, or we can continue to elect politicians who will follow when dragged, but won’t lead."