Three police officers stood and watched as a fourth, Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd’s neck.
Floyd’s murder sparked peaceful demonstrations in cities across the country, demonstrations that, in Minneapolis and a few other places, turned toward riots.
In the last years of the Obama administration, peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations occurred in cities across the country.
The Obama Justice Department entered into a series of consent decrees with more than a dozen police departments to encourage them to change their practices — to become more a guardian than an occupier.
Last October, Bob Kroll, the president of the Minneapolis Police Union, appeared at a Trump rally to celebrate the president for freeing the police from the mild reforms of the Obama years.
