5 years since the murder of George Floyd: A statement from Minnesota Justice Research Center

Today, May 25, marks five years since former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, whose cries for breath and calls to his mother shook the world. It has been five years since our city rose in response, demanding acknowledgement of the rampant racism in our law enforcement and the need for a reckoning with the violence carried out by police against the Black community. As the movement quickly spread across the U.S. and globally, the world had a question for Minnesota: What happens next? We may not be in the streets like we were in 2020, but we are five years into answering that question — and we have a long way to go.

The movement awakened by George Floyd's murder has achieved meaningful progress in Minnesota. We held Derek Chauvin accountable for the murder with a historic conviction. We critically reexamined policing practices in our state. And we saw real efforts to understand and repair the harm caused to Black and other marginalized communities by those sworn to protect them. This is what happens when community members and advocates refuse to accept the status quo and bravely imagine radical alternatives.

The Minnesota Justice Research Center is situated just down the street from George Floyd Square in South Minneapolis. We work in and alongside this community to transform our state’s criminal legal system into one that is restorative, accountable, and equitable in delivering justice. For all of us.

And that includes transforming policing in our state. We brought community members together and collected input to shape the state’s consent decree to hold the City of Minneapolis accountable for ending discriminatory, race-based policing. We have partnered with Canopy Roots to evaluate the Minneapolis Behavioral Crisis Response Program—an appropriate response model for our friends and family members dealing with mental health crises. And we’re working to make sure that MPD solves more crimes, so our criminal legal system can prioritize the prevention of crimes over excessive punishment. 

But despite our state’s meaningful steps forward, the work to dismantle centuries-long, systemic racism in our criminal legal system is far from done.

Despite rumors of a Presidential pardon for Derek Chauvin’s federal conviction and the DOJ’s decision to no longer pursue a consent decree with Minneapolis, we are reassured by our state’s accountability systems. At MNJRC, we firmly believe justice must be applied equitably—if a force permits MPD or Derek Chauvin to evade the accountability measures in place from the federal government, it would be yet another failure of our criminal legal system to fairly deliver justice. Fortunately, Minnesotans have secured pathways to justice: an active consent decree negotiated by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and Chauvin’s state conviction landed by the Minnesota Attorney General. The people of Minnesota demanded accountability and will not settle for anything less.

True justice requires not just reform—which often gives us the comfort of action without fundamentally changing things—but transformation. We must completely reimagine our approach to public safety, steering it away from one that overuses punishment to one that meets the needs of the people it claims to protect and serve.

“George Floyd’s life mattered. He should still be with us today. As we mark five years since his murder, we are reminded that accountability is not a one-time event; it’s an ongoing commitment. We invite you to join the Minnesota Justice Research Center in recommitting to the difficult but necessary work of reimagining justice in our state.”

- Justin Terrell, Executive Director, MNJRC