Here’s what you need to know:
- A memorial service for George Floyd is a somber moment after days of anger and unrest.
- Murkowski backs Mattis’s criticism of Trump’s leadership.
- A judge set bail at $750,000 for three officers charged with aiding George Floyd’s death.
- A suspect in the Ahmaud Arbery case used a racist slur after the shooting, an investigator testified.
- Senate Democrats hold 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence.
- Cities are lifting curfews as officials pledge to support peaceful protests.
- A friend in Mr. Floyd’s passenger seat: ‘He was not resisting, in no form or way.’
A memorial service for George Floyd is a somber moment after days of anger and unrest.
At a memorial service in Minneapolis studded with prominent figures, members of George Floyd’s extended family recalled him on Thursday as someone with a gift for making friends, who made everyone from relatives to the lowliest people in his neighborhood feel welcome.
“Everywhere you go and see people, how they cling to him,” said Mr. Floyd’s brother, Philonise. “They wanted to be around him.”
Family members, friends, political and religious leaders joined those gathered for the service in Minneapolis, as people around the world watched on television and online.
The somber event followed more than a week of upheaval around the United States prompted by the video of a white police officer kneeling for almost nine minutes on Mr. Floyd’s neck as he lay face down and handcuffed on the pavement, saying “I can’t breathe.”
In death, the 46-year-old Mr. Floyd has become a symbol of police brutality. But family members remembered him as the man they knew as Perry, and people in the neighborhood called “Big Floyd.”
Even for homeless people and drug addicts, “when they spoke to George, they felt like they was the president, that’s how he made them feel,” Philonise Floyd said.
“Being in the house with my brother, it was inspiring,” he added, “because my mom used to take in other kids, and they were George’s friends.” He spoke of sharing a bed with his big brother, making banana-and-mayonnaise sandwiches and playing football.
One of his cousins, Tera Brown, said: “The thing I miss most about him is his hugs. He was just this big giant.”
A mural above the dais of the Frank J. Lindquist Sanctuary at North Central University depicted Mr. Floyd’s face above the words “Now I can breathe.” Behind Mr. Floyd’s gleaming bronze coffin, a choir and musicians filled the room with gospel music.
The Rev. Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy at the service, which was the first of several planned to commemorate Mr. Floyd. Services were also expected on Saturday in Raeford, N.C., and on Monday in Houston.
George Floyd “did not die of common health conditions,” Mr. Sharpton said. “He died of a common American criminal justice malfunction.”
“The reason we could never be who we wanted to be and dreamed of being is you kept your knee on our neck,” Mr. Sharpton added. “It’s time for us to stand up in George’s name and say get your knee off our necks.”
Before the service began, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith of Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz, Mayors Jacob Frey of Minneapolis and Melvin Carter of St. Paul and many others milled about, most of them wearing masks, quietly greeting each other with nods and elbow bumps.
Mr. Frey knelt with one hand on the coffin for minutes, his body heaving and tears on his face.
A minister appealed to people in the sanctuary to socially distance themselves and take only every other seat. Mr. Floyd’s family entered last, occupying front rows set aside for them.
As the service began, the university president, the Rev. Scott Hagen, announced the creation of the George Floyd Memorial Scholarship, adding that since Mr. Floyd’s death, people had given $53,000 specifically for the education of young black people.
“I’m now challenging every university president in the United States of America to establish your own George Floyd memorial scholarship fund,” he said.
Murkowski backs Mattis’s criticism of Trump’s leadership.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska on Thursday became the first Republican senator to say she was considering not voting for President Trump, as she endorsed scathing criticism of the president by James Mattis, the former defense secretary.
Ms. Murkowski said the critique by Mr. Mattis on Wednesday, in which he said that Mr. Trump had divided the nation and failed to lead, was overdue and might be a tipping point that would cause Republicans to air concerns about the president that they had only spoken about privately.
Some Republican lawmakers have found fault with the president’s handling of the unrest convulsing the nation, but Ms. Murkowski was the most explicit so far in her support for the comments by Mr. Mattis, a former four-star Marine Corps general.
“I was really thankful,” Ms. Murkowski told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I thought General Mattis’s words were true and honest and necessary and overdue.”
Ms. Murkowski, one of the few Republicans in Congress who has been willing to break publicly with Mr. Trump, added that when she saw the Mattis statement, “I felt like perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally, and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.”
Asked whether she could still support Mr. Trump in the coming election, Ms. Murkowski said: “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.”
In his statement, Mr. Mattis said: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mr. Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander in chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”
The statement came hours after the current defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, said he did not think the present state of unrest in U.S. cities warranted the deployment of active-duty troops to confront protesters. Mr. Esper’s comments contradicted Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly raised the possibility of the Insurrection Act to do exactly that.
In a Pentagon news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Esper said ordering active-duty troops to police American cities should be a “last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations.” He said that, for now, this was not warranted.
A judge set bail at $750,000 for three officers charged with aiding George Floyd’s death.
Three former Minneapolis police officers charged with in aiding in George Floyd’s death appeared briefly in court for a bail hearing on Thursday afternoon, in a first public appearance since protests seized the nation.
The officers, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao, appeared one at a time, wearing masks because of coronavirus concerns. Amid protests and high national tensions, lawyers for the defendants entered the courtroom via a corridor flanked by National Guard soldiers and Hennepin County Sheriff’s Deputies.
A Hennepin County district judge, Paul R. Scoggin, considered and denied requests for reduced bail, which was set at $750,000 for each with certain conditions.
The officers had been charged on Wednesday with aiding and abetting second-degree murder, as well as aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. A fourth former officer who was seen on video holding Mr. Floyd down, Derek Chauvin, 44, faces an increased charge of second-degree murder, as well as second-degree manslaughter.
All four officers were fired after video emerged of the May 25 arrest that led to the killing.
Mr. Chauvin, who is white, held his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while Mr. Floyd pleaded he could not breathe. Mr. Lane and Mr. Kueng held his legs and back, and Mr. Thao stood by, according to video footage of the arrest.
Mr. Lane and Mr. Kueng are white and Mr. Thao is Hmong, according to a spokesman for the Minnesota attorney general.
More than 200 pages of personnel records released by the Minneapolis Police Department late Wednesday revealed the varying histories of the four officers, including a more detailed complaint against Mr. Chauvin.
Mr. Chauvin appears to have been reprimanded and possibly suspended after a woman complained in 2007 that he needlessly removed her from her car, searched her and put her into the back of a squad car for driving 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. He was the subject of at least 17 misconduct complaints over two decades, but the woman’s complaint is the only one detailed in 79 pages of his heavily redacted personnel file.
The file shows that the complaint was upheld and that Mr. Chauvin was issued a letter of reprimand.
“Officer did not have to remove complainant from car, Could’ve conducted interview outside the vehicle,” read the investigators’ finding.
In one part of the records, the discipline imposed is listed as “letter of reprimand,” but Mr. Chauvin was also issued a “notice of suspension” in May 2008, just after the investigation into the complaint ended, that lists the same internal affairs case number.
Mr. Kueng, 26, was an officer with the department for less than six months. He joined as a cadet in February 2019 and became an officer on Dec. 10, 2019, having previously worked as a community service officer with the department. He also worked as a security guard at a Macy’s and stocked shelves at a Target.
Mr. Lane, 37, was accepted to the police academy in January 2019, having begun working in the criminal justice system in 2017 as a probation officer. Mr. Lane previously worked a series of different jobs, from restaurant server to Home Depot sales associate. He volunteered at Ka Joog tutoring, working with Somali youth in Cedar Riverside.
Mr. Thao, 34, was hired in 2008 as a community service officer in Minneapolis. He was laid off in late 2009 because of budget cuts, but was recalled in 2011 and was then hired as a police officer in 2012. He had faced six misconduct complaints in his career with the Minneapolis Police Department.
A suspect in the Ahmaud Arbery case used a racist slur after the shooting, an investigator testified.
A Georgia investigator testified on Thursday that one of the three defendants accused of chasing down and killing Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was jogging in Brunswick, Ga., heard another defendant use a racist slur after shooting Mr. Arbery.
At a preliminary hearing in the case, the investigator said that William Bryan, who used his cellphone to film the fatal encounter, heard the remark by Travis McMichael, the man who pulled the trigger.
From the witness stand, Richard Dial, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation assistant special agent in charge of the case, said that Mr. Bryan heard Mr. McMichael use the slur after the shooting took place, and before the police arrived on the scene.
The death of Mr. Arbery in February drew widespread condemnation that only intensified after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. His name has become one of several that protesters have repeated in recent days, urging attention to the issue of systemic racism and criminal justice reform in nationwide demonstrations.
The purpose of the hearing is to determine whether probable cause exists to support the criminal charges against the three men.
Gregory McMichael, a retired investigator in the local district attorney’s office, and his son, Travis McMichael, were arrested May 7. Each was charged with murder and aggravated assault. They had pursued Mr. Arbery through their Satilla Shores neighborhood on the afternoon of Feb. 23, suspecting him of being the perpetrator of a number of neighborhood break-ins.
Travis McMichael, 34, who was armed with a shotgun, shot Mr. Arbery three times as the two men scuffled. Greg McMichael, 64, who had armed himself with a handgun, watched the shooting while standing in the bed of a pickup truck.
Their neighbor, William Bryan, 50, made a video recording of the incident on his phone. He was arrested May 21 on charges of felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment. In a police report, Greg McMichael appears to indicate that Mr. Bryan, who goes by “Roddie,” was a participant in the chase, telling an officer that Mr. Bryan “attempted to block” Mr. Arbery as he ran.
The three men remain in Glynn County jail and have not yet entered a plea in the case.
Gov. Brian Kemp, in a news conference earlier this week, said that there would be a significant police presence in Brunswick on Thursday, given the unrest and violence that have rocked cities in protests over police violence.
Senate Democrats hold 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence.
Senate Democrats on Thursday held a moment of silence lasting eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time that George Floyd was held down by a police officer, who kept his knee pressed on Mr. Floyd’s neck even after Mr. Floyd became unresponsive.
The moment was also meant to honor Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old black man killed while running down a suburban street in Brunswick, Ga., and Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black medical worker who was shot by the police at her home in Louisville, Ky.
Standing six feet apart next to a statue of Frederick Douglass in Emancipation Hall on Capitol Hill, it appeared to be the first moment the Democratic caucus had gathered in one place since the coronavirus pandemic began to spread through the Capitol.
A handful of senators — Tim Kaine of Virginia, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Sherrod Brown of Ohio — knelt on the marble floor during the moment of silence.
“This is a very painful moment,” Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, said. He offered a short eulogy of Mr. Floyd’s life and death and called the setting appropriate for the moment.
“I stood there in silence, looking down, and in my eyesight were the words ‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress,’” Mr. Booker said, referring to a quote from Mr. Douglass’s West India emancipation speech. “It was very profound for me.”
Cities are lifting curfews as officials pledge to support peaceful protests.
Curfews imposed to clamp down on the looting and violence that has followed some peaceful daytime protests are now increasingly being lifted in a number of cities nationwide, with officials ramping up pledges to support peaceful demonstrators.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said on Thursday that the department would no longer enforce an overnight curfew, citing a “recent pattern of peaceful actions by protesters.” The county was soon followed by similar moves in several Southern California cities, including Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Culver City.
“Angelenos are rallying around powerful and peaceful demonstrations against racial injustice,” Eric Garcetti, the Mayor of Los Angeles, said in a statement announcing there would be no curfew.
The moves came a day after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit arguing that curfews in Southern California suppressed political speech in violation of the First Amendment.
In Washington, where President Trump has encouraged shows of force from the military and law enforcement to crack down on protesters, Mayor Muriel Bowser said there would be no curfew on Thursday night.
Mayor Jenny A. Durkan of Seattle said on Thursday that the city’s curfew would end “following feedback from community leaders and protesters who wanted to ensure no peaceful individuals who were demonstrating were arrested.”
Not all cities were lifting curfews. The City of San Bernardino, one of the California cities named in the A.C.L.U.’s lawsuit, said on Thursday that its nightly curfew would remain in place for the time being.
In some cases, the curfews have prompted renewed frustration among demonstrators. In New York, a night of mostly peaceful protests on Wednesday culminated in police officers aggressively arresting protesters after an 8 p.m. curfew, leading to widespread outrage. On Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio emphatically defended the Police Department’s actions.
He reiterated that peaceful protests would be allowed to continue even after curfew, but that the police should have the discretion to decide when to disperse crowds even if all is calm.
A friend in Mr. Floyd’s passenger seat: ‘He was not resisting, in no form or way.’
A longtime friend of George Floyd who was in the passenger seat of Mr. Floyd’s car when he was arrested said on Wednesday night that Mr. Floyd had tried to defuse the tensions with the police and did not resist.
“He was, from the beginning, trying in his humblest form to show he was not resisting in no form or way,” said Maurice Lester Hall, 42.
“I could hear him pleading, ‘Please, officer, what’s all this for?’” Mr. Hall said in an interview with Erica L. Green of The New York Times on Wednesday night.
He offered an account that he said filled in critical details that were not captured on video about what led up to the moments Mr. Floyd was taken into custody by police officers and ended up with his neck pinned to the ground under the weight of Derek Chauvin’s knee.
“When they approached, they approached with aggression,” Mr. Hall said of the Minneapolis police officers.
Mr. Floyd complied with the instruction to show his hands, Mr. Hall said, but an officer started reaching into the car grabbing at them, prompting Mr. Floyd to ask why. “Now what are you doing that for, you asked to see my hands?” Mr. Hall recalled Mr. Floyd saying.
During Mr. Floyd’s arrest, Mr. Hall said he could hear his cries: “Please officer. I’ve been shot before.”
Mr. Hall recounted Mr. Floyd’s last moments.
“He was just crying out at that time for anyone to help, because he was dying,” Mr. Hall said. “I’m going to always remember seeing the fear in Floyd’s face, because he’s such a king. That’s what sticks with me: seeing a grown man cry, before seeing a grown man die.”
A student struck with a bean bag round at a protest in Austin has brain damage, his brother says.
Justin Howell was not the demonstrator who threw a water bottle on Sunday at officers guarding police headquarters, Chief Brian Manley of the Austin police said. It was not Mr. Howell, but someone next to him, who then hurled a backpack toward the officers, the chief said.
But as officers responded with force, it was Mr. Howell, 20, a student studying political science at Texas State University, who was struck in the head with a bean bag round fired by the police. Mr. Howell was critically injured.
The encounter is expected to be discussed at an Austin City Council hearing on Thursday afternoon about the actions of the police during the protests.
In an article published Wednesday in The Battalion, the student newspaper of Texas A&M University, Mr. Howells’ brother Joshua Howell wrote that Justin, who is black, sustained a skull fracture and brain damage and that doctors said he would probably not recover quickly.
“These ‘less-lethal’ munitions are only ‘less-lethal’ by technicality,” Joshua Howell, who is the opinion editor of the newspaper, wrote. “My brother’s condition shows what can happen when you fire them into a crowd.”
Saying the police in Austin were “entirely out of their depth,” Joshua Howell wrote that when people carried his brother’s limp body to the headquarters building for medical help, the police fired at them, too — as they had been told to do by other officers — a sequence of events that Chief Manley said on Monday was under investigation.
“At minimum, it shows a complete inability to be aware of your surroundings and to manage the situation appropriately,” Joshua Howell wrote.
Protesters welcome charges against the officers in George Floyd’s death.
From coast to coast, protesters had a consistent reaction to the charges that have now been brought against three additional police officers in the death of George Floyd: It’s good news — and it’s not nearly enough. There need to be convictions. There needs to be systemic change.
“I think it’s going to be a really long fight, not just in Minnesota but in cities around the country,” said Izzy Smith, an educator from the South Side of Minneapolis who was among those demonstrating at the site where Mr. Floyd was arrested last month.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” she added, “so it’s keeping the foot on the gas but keep it steady.”
Nearby, Marquise Bowie said of the charges: “That’s good. It ain’t going to bring the man back, though. It’s a start.”
Some protesters expressed disappointment that the officer who pressed on Mr. Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, had been charged with second-degree murder rather than first-degree, or that action against the other officers was not taken sooner.
“It’s about damn time,” said Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer and protest organizer in Minneapolis. “If not for the outrage that had rocked the country, these officers never would have been charged.”
At a demonstration on the North Side of Chicago, Jonathan Mejias said he was gratified by the news, to a point. “It’s just one piece,” he said. “The world needs to know that it doesn’t end with resolving this one case. There are too many more out there.”
Byron Spencer, handing out water and burgers to protesters outside Los Angeles City Hall, said he was both “elated and defeated” by word of the new charges. He said he had seen countless surges of outrage over police brutality against black men, only to have it happen again.
“I’m 55, I’m black and I’m male. I’ve seen the cycle,” he said. “It’s almost like PTSD constantly having this conversation with my son.”
Cierra Sesay reacted to the charges at a demonstration in the shadow of the State Capitol in Denver. “It’s amazing, it’s another box we can check,” she said. “But it goes up so much higher. It’s about the system.”
More protests were held across New York City, with police clashing with large numbers of demonstrators who refused to abide by the city’s 8 p.m. curfew. Earlier on Wednesday, Celia Oliver, 30, a nurse practitioner, brought her 9-month-old son Elliot to a rally on Roosevelt Island.
“I think it’s important to show that all of us — and every person who has been killed — started out as babies,” Ms. Oliver said, referring to why she and her husband had brought their son along. “It’s his first lesson in anti-racism.”
In San Francisco, Tevita Tomasi — who is of Polynesian descent and described himself as “dark and tall and big” — said he regularly faced racial profiling. On Wednesday, he distributed bottled water at what he said was his first demonstration but would not be his last. What would stop him from protesting?
“They would have to shoot me.”
Another man who said ‘I can’t breathe’ died in custody. An autopsy calls it homicide.
A black man who called out “I can’t breathe” before dying in police custody in Tacoma, Wash., was killed as a result of oxygen deprivation and the physical restraint that was used on him, according to details of a medical examiner’s report released on Wednesday.
The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that the death of the man, Manuel Ellis, 33, was a homicide. Investigators with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department were in the process of preparing a report about the March death, which occurred shortly after an arrest by officers from the Tacoma Police Department, said the sheriff’s spokesman, Ed Troyer.
“The information is all being put together,” Detective Troyer said. “We expect to present it to the prosecutor at the end of this week or early next week.”
Mr. Ellis’s sister, Monet Carter-Mixon, called for action to bring accountability in the death and further scrutiny of both the Police Department’s practices and how the investigation into his death has been handled.
“There’s a lot of questions that still need to be answered,” Ms. Carter-Mixon said.
Mr. Ellis died from respiratory arrest, hypoxia and physical restraint, according to the medical examiner’s office. The report listed methamphetamine intoxication and heart disease as contributing factors.
Police officers encountered Mr. Ellis, a musician and father of two from Tacoma, on the night of March 3 as they were stopped at an intersection. They saw him banging on the window of another vehicle, Detective Troyer said.
Mr. Ellis approached the officers, Detective Troyer said, and then threw an officer to the ground when the officer got out of the vehicle. The two officers and two backup officers who joined — two of them white, one black and one Asian — handcuffed him.
“Mr. Ellis was physically restrained as he continued to be combative,” the Tacoma Police Department said in a statement on Wednesday.
Detective Troyer said he did not know all the details of the restraint the officers used — they were not wearing body cameras — but said he did not believe they used a chokehold or a knee on Mr. Ellis’s neck. They rolled him on his side after he called out, “I can’t breathe.”
Drew Brees apologizes for saying kneeling during the anthem was ‘disrespectful.’
Drew Brees, the N.F.L. quarterback, has apologized, one day after receiving intense and widespread criticism for saying he considered it disrespectful for players to kneel during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.
Mr. Brees, the star quarterback of the New Orleans Saints, made his initial comments after he was asked in an interview with Yahoo Finance how the N.F.L. should respond if players resumed kneeling when the season starts again. “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country,” he said. “I think what you do by standing there and showing respect to the flag with your hand over your heart, is it shows unity.”
Mr. Brees’s comments prompted outrage, as the nation confronted a wave of protests following the death of George Floyd.
By Thursday morning, Mr. Brees had apologized on Instagram, saying his comments were insensitive and “missed the mark.”
“Those words have become divisive and hurtful and have misled people into believing that somehow I am an enemy,” Mr. Brees said, adding that he stood with African-Americans in the fight against systemic racial injustice and police brutality.
“I recognize that I should do less talking and more listening,” he said, “and when the black community is talking about their pain, we all need to listen.”
Reporting was contributed by Tim Arango, Mike Baker, Kim Barker, Katie Benner, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Emily Cochrane, Nick Corasaniti, Michael Crowley, Elizabeth Dias, John Eligon, Reid J. Epstein, Tess Felder, Lazaro Gamio, Sandra E. Garcia, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Katie Glueck, Russell Goldman, Erica L. Green, Richard Fausset, Amy Julia Harris, Shawn Hubler, Carl Hulse, Mike Ives, Sean Keenan, Neil MacFarquhar, Barbara Marcolini, Patricia Mazzei, Sarah Mervosh, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Richard Perez-Peña, Catherine Porter, Elisabetta Povoledo, Michael Powell, Frances Robles, Alejandra Rosa, Marc Santora, Anna Schaverien, Thomas Shanker, Derrick Taylor, Glenn Thrush, Daniel Victor, Neil Vigdor, Karen Weise and Mihir Zaveri.
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