Floyd family attorney Ben Crump welcomed the decision, underlining that the payout sent a powerful statement about the value of Black lives in America.
“This historic agreement, the largest pre-trial settlement in a police civil rights wrongful death case in US history, makes a statement that George Floyd deserved better than what we witnessed on May 25th, 2020. That George Floyd's life matters, and by extension black lives matter,” Crump said in a press conference.
George Perry Floyd was an African American man killed during an arrest after a store clerk alleged that he had passed a counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis. Derek Chauvin, one of four police officers who arrived on the scene, knelt on Floyd's neck for a period initially reported to be 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
After his death, protests against police brutality, especially toward Black people, quickly spread across the United States and internationally.