Monique Cullars-Doty was at home five years ago when her phone started blowing up with messages from friends. People asked if she had seen the video.
Cullars-Doty, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, has been an activist since her nephew, Marcus Golden, was killed by St. Paul police in 2015. She watched the video of officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck as Floyd called out for his mother and pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. Cullars-Doty was horrified.
Eventually, Floyd’s pleas stopped. He lay motionless and silent on the concrete.
“My first thought was, ‘He cannot be dead. Please tell me this man is not dead. He cannot be dead,’” Cullars-Doty said.
She called one of her friends who worked as a nurse, and asked her if she thought Floyd had died.
“Monique, he’s dead,” her friend said.
“And then, it was just, it was a silent scream, a screaming so deep there’s just no sound,” Cullars-Doty said.
As the five-year anniversary of Floyd’s murder approaches on May 25, that scream still resonates with many activists and community members, who say they haven’t seen enough change in police reform and accountability. While the officers who murdered Floyd were fired and convicted for their crimes in state and federal court, some activists say progress has since stalled.
“This was the nature of the Minneapolis Police Department to allow this to happen,” said Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality. “The uprising after the murder of George Floyd exposed all of that. Unfortunately and sadly, I don’t feel the city has done nearly enough to address it.”
Several community members say they haven’t seen the changes they had called for on the local, state and federal level. They feel that the changes that have been made are insufficient, and have only been instituted because they were ordered by the court.
City leaders, however, say change is occurring. They point to reforms made under a settlement agreement with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, and say the police department’s culture has improved.
Some community members say Minneapolis police have made strides, and have worked to build better relationships with the community.
“It takes time for a culture to change,” said Ian Bethel, a pastor at New Beginnings Baptist Church. Bethel leads the Unity Mediation Community Team, a public safety nonprofit that helps community members who have had negative interactions with Minneapolis police.
Momentum ‘fizzled out’
Millions around the world reacted with shock when they saw the video of Floyd begging for his life as Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. But for those who had lost family members at the hands of police and for police accountability advocates, it was a familiar scene.
Toshira Garraway leads Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence, a support group for those who have lost loved ones to police. She shared the video of Floyd with as many people as she could.
“I just began to share it as much as I could so that other people could see, because I know that they [police] could take somebody’s life and literally shape it as if nothing happened, and make it be an accident,” Garraway said. “I was mortified to see a human being treat another human being like that.”
Garraway worked to support Floyd’s family and loved ones. She attended court with Floyd’s girlfriend, Courteney Ross, when she testified at Chauvin’s trial in 2021, holding her hand as she prepared to take the stand.
Garraway feels for other families who have lost loved ones to police brutality, but didn’t receive the same amount of national attention. If not for the bystander video captured by Darnella Frazier, she said, the outcome in Floyd’s case would have been completely different.
“The only reason that accountability and support was given was because they didn’t have a choice, because it was open for the world to see, because the Facebook Live got spread so widely, so fast, that they couldn’t cover it up,” Garraway said.
Some community members said momentum from the unparalleled protests following Floyd’s murder seemed to lead nowhere.
“I just think a lot of that momentum just sort of fizzled out, which is a shame,” said Jae Yates, an organizer with Twin Cities Coalition for Justice.
Some of the activism at the time was “preformative,” he said, such as people posting black squares on their social media accounts to protest police brutality. And some of the changes police say they’ve made since then, such as additional training for officers, didn’t get to the core of the issue, he added.
“It’s not about them being improperly trained or that they need to open their hearts and minds to the community. The problem is that we have absolutely zero control over what they can and cannot do to normal people,” Yates said.
Some white community members say things have improved, he said, but people of color and police accountability advocates haven’t seen the progress they had hoped for.
“The rest of us are kind of like, ‘But nothing has changed’”, Yates said. “It’s literally exactly the same.”
The change that has taken place in local policing, some said, was either ineffective, or was carried out due to external pressure instead of an altruistic desire to reform. Much of it has been driven by two investigations, one by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and another by the U.S. Department of Justice. Both investigations found that the department routinely discriminated against people of color, particularly Black and Indigenous residents.
“We’ve had to have court orders to fight for any change that we have gotten,” Garraway said of the consent decrees. “And it shouldn’t be that.”
Yates said he would have hoped to see more community control and oversight over the police department by now.
The Community Commission on Police Oversight, which the city established in 2022, doesn’t have power, Yates said. The group can request research into complaints filed by the public against police officers, and can also make recommendations related to police policies, but cannot take any direct action itself regarding police matters.
“It’s a body that is completely powerless to actually do anything around the police. They are entirely a symbolic gesture that the city created to placate people, but they can’t actually do anything,” Yates said.
Cullars-Doty said the events of 2020 increased awareness among the community about police brutality and racism, but for any meaningful change to take place, the country needs to first address systemic racism.
“America refuses to deal with its history of white supremacy, of genocide, of colonialism, of imperialism, of slavery, of racism,” she said. “We’re not advancing like we should. We won’t until that’s done.”
Activists say Democrats failed them despite having majority control
Johnathon McClellan, who leads the Minnesota Justice Coalition, said Minnesota Democrats had an opportunity to pass progressive police reform measures, especially when the party had a majority in state government in the 2023 to 2024 biennium, controlling the state House and Senate, and the governor’s office.
While progressive reforms have passed in other areas, such as Drivers Licenses for All, which granted licenses to undocumented immigrants, and the legalization of recreational marijuana, police reform measures fell short, McClellan said.
“You had the governor asking for the legislation, and you had all this momentum around trying to get something done, and then when you get the trifecta, you’re still incapable of making something happen. And that’s a failure,” he said.
McClellan has been pushing at the Capitol for police reforms such as ending qualified immunity for officers, eliminating the statute of limitations for wrongful death claims and requiring some officers to carry liability insurance. But none of the measures passed.
At a news conference last year, McClellan and other activists said that they had seen little legislative change since Floyd’s murder. They said lawmakers hadn’t followed through with promises they made in 2020 to improve police accountability.
“It did not have the impact at the Legislature that it should have had,” McClellan said of Floyd’s murder. “And specifically, we’re talking about police accountability legislation, and that politicians prioritize politics over people.”
Legislation failed on the federal level as well. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was introduced in Congress in 2021, and would have addressed racial bias and excessive force in policing. The legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives, but did not pass the Senate.
Minneapolis police supporters
Dozens of community members gathered in a church parking lot in late April across the street from where George Floyd was murdered at the intersection at E. 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in South Minneapolis. The group gathered to pray ahead of the 5-year anniversary of Floyd’s murder, and to highlight changes they’ve seen in the relationship between the police and community.
Some stood alongside Police Chief Brian O’Hara, and commended the department. They said it’s important for the community to work alongside police in order for meaningful change to occur.
Cynthia Wilson, president of the Minneapolis chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the department has started participating in healing circles, where officers and community members talk about trauma they’ve experienced.
“When we’re talking about changing the mindsets of individuals, this is huge,” she said at the April event.
Community members and police officers then walked together from George Floyd Square to Phelps Park. Police officers grilled food and mingled with community members under clouds of barbeque smoke.
Several community members say they’ve seen the department take more steps to build trust with community members, especially since O’Hara, who previously worked at the police department in Newark, New Jersey, took over as chief in Minneapolis in late 2022. Medaria Arradondo was chief when Floyd was murdered. They said an event like this would not have been possible five years ago.
Vinny Dionne is a lifelong south Minneapolis resident who co-founded the Indigenous Protector Movement and advocates for the Little Earth community. Dionne said he experienced police brutality when he was growing up, and saw how Native people were treated differently by law enforcement.
Immediately after Floyd was killed, Dionne said, the area around the murder scene in south Minneapolis was abandoned by police, and the relationship between the community and officers further deteriorated. But in recent years, Minneapolis police have been improving their relationship with the Indigenous community, and officers have made themselves available to listen to concerns, he said.
“I can call them and they’ll answer,” he said. “I’ve never had that access to them ever before in my life.”
While the police department has become more racially diverse, Dionne said Native representation on the force is still lacking. According to the city, almost 33% of the department’s sworn officers are people of color as of May 2025, compared to about 26% at that same time in 2020.
While Native people experience high levels of discrimination by police, they’re often left out of conversations regarding police reform, Dionne said.
“We fight so hard, because we know if we don’t use our voice, we’re going to be run over and forgotten like we always have been,” he said.
Chief, city leaders say change is happening
O’Hara, who has led the police department for two-and-a-half years, said there’s still work to do, but the department has made “remarkable” progress. He recalled stepping into his role with a force full of officers still “traumatized” by the events of 2020. Morale was low. Hundreds of officers had left the department.
“It was so depressing,” O’Hara said.
He said he’s worked to improve the department’s culture by offering more resources and support to officers. He assigned dedicated officers to show up in the community near the George Floyd Square, where Floyd was killed, to begin gradually building back trust.
“They have connected with the business owners, the people that live here, they know them, they see them walking here,” O’Hara said. “And granted, they’re not welcomed by everybody, and I understand that.”
The department has also been hiring more officers of color. It now allows officers to wear hijabs, and last year swore in its first female Somali American officer and its first non-U.S. citizen.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who took office in 2018, said change is underway. Crafting new policies and training for officers is just one step, he said, adding that the department has been working to improve officers’ interactions with community members.
“Otherwise, the change you’re pushing so hard to achieve isn’t felt, and it’s like a tree that falls in the woods and nobody hears it,” Frey said.
The city created the Office of Community Safety in 2022, which encompasses public safety efforts beyond policing, such as a mental health crisis response team, violence interrupters and community safety centers.
Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette leads the office. He was chief judge in Hennepin County in 2020, coordinating logistics for Chauvin’s trial, which involved shutting the courthouse down to the general public, increasing security and managing media from around the world.
Barnette said that in his previous work as a defense attorney, prosecutor and judge, he encountered people after they had already entered the criminal justice system, and that the community safety post was a new role that allowed him to prevent crime from occuring to begin with.
“I just thought, ‘Here’s an opportunity to be in a position where you can affect change a lot sooner than what you’ve been doing in your career, that you could actually, for better words, do some things that are preventive and be involved with change at the beginning of the road or change before something even happens,’” Barnette said.
Barnette remembers when Rodney King, a Black motorist, was severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in 1991, which was captured on dash camera video. The officers involved were acquitted in state court despite the video evidence, which Barnette said made him apprehensive that change would occur even after video of Floyd’s murder circulated across the world.
But 2020 was different, he said, and people who normally didn’t speak up about policing were outraged.
“What was different to me in my lifetime was that there was a sense of change. But it wasn’t just a sense of change for the African American community, but it was a sense of change for the city of Minneapolis. It was a sense of change for the state of Minnesota, then the country,” he said.
Barnette pointed to the consent decree between the city and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, and the city’s mental health crisis response team and violence interrupters as signs of change. He emphasized that progress takes time.
“In no way are we perfect, but boy, I really do think we’re on the right path for change,” he said.
Federal government wants to end consent decree
In 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that its investigation of Minneapolis police found that the department routinely violated community members’ constitutional rights, and discriminated against Black and Indigenous residents.
The city approved an agreement with the DOJ on January 6 to enter into a federal consent decree in the final days of the Biden administration. The agreement needed to be signed by a federal judge before becoming official. Activists feared that if the agreement wasn’t official before President Donald Trump took office, the DOJ would back out.
The DOJ asked the court to pause the case three times. Trump signed an executive order in late April that called for the U.S. Attorney General to review all consent decrees within 60 days and to “modify, rescind, or move to conclude such measures that unduly impede the performance of law enforcement functions.”
On Wednesday, the DOJ filed a motion asking the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that “the United States no longer believes that the proposed consent decree would be in the public interest.”
City officials said they’re committed to the reforms in the agreement, and will execute them on their own. Gross, who leads Communities United Against Police Brutality, said the community will do what it can to hold the city accountable to their word.
The city has already entered a state consent decree with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights that is set to last at least four years. Minneapolis police have been rewriting policies regarding use of force, arrests, citations and more. It has also been working to address a backlog of complaints alleging officer misconduct.
The department is making progress under the state consent decree, O’Hara said, adding that many reforms in the state agreement are also in the federal agreement.
A report released this week by Effective Law Enforcement for All, the independent monitor who is overseeing the reforms, said Minneapolis and its police department have “made more progress toward building a foundation for sustainable reform in the first year of monitoring than nearly any other jurisdiction.”
But the report also said some officers in the department have expressed skepticism about the reforms. The report noted a “serious issue” during a crisis intervention training class, when officers were “challenging the curriculum.”
At a press conference on Wednesday, several activists, including Gross, said they haven’t seen enough progress on the state consent decree.
“They’re grossly behind in several areas, but the most important and the worst thing is the Minneapolis police are still doing the things that they were doing that led to this consent decree, and we will never get where we need to until that changes,” Gross said.
Mistrust of police among people of color persists
Activists say that a lack of trust persists among communities of color and police, as is exemplified by recent cases.
Community members were outraged when Minneapolis police took several days to arrest John Sawchak, a white man who shot and wounded his neighbor Davis Moturi, who is Black, in October 2024. Moturi had called Minneapolis police at least 19 times in about a year-long period to report Sawchak for threatening him, and for causing vandalism and property damage. Sawchak later shot Moturi as he trimmed a tree in his yard.
Sawchak was charged last July with threats of violence before the shooting. Attempted murder charges were filed the day after Moturi was shot, but Sawchak wasn’t arrested until five days after the shooting.
Some activists called for firing O’Hara after the incident.
“[O’Hara] completely allowed his officers to ignore a Black man experiencing a hate crime for months and then failed to arrest the perpetrator of that crime in a timely manner,” Yates said.
“I was really appalled by that,” Gross said of the police department’s response.
O’Hara later apologized to Moturi, saying the department had failed him.
“Collectively, we should have done better, period,” Frey said. “And that is not limited to MPD [Minneapolis Police Department]. That is collectively as a system of government in multiple jurisdictions.”
Community members also point to the case of Allison Lussier, a Native woman who was found dead in her apartment last year. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office determined that her cause of death involved bleeding near her brain but could not determine whether her death was natural, accidental or caused by another person — homicide.
Lussier’s family and activists say she was a victim of domestic violence, and that the police department hasn’t investigated the case thoroughly. Her family says the department brushed Lussier’s death off as an overdose because needles were found near her body.
No charges have been filed in the case.
Lussier’s aunt, Jana Williams, said she thinks the department still discriminates against Native people, which was a finding in the DOJ’s investigation into Minneapolis police.
“It hasn’t changed. In fact, what’s happened now is that, instead of just harassing them, they look the other way,” she said.
The city will be audited on the responses to the Moturi and Lussier cases.
Looking forward
As they reflect on the events of five years ago, advocates say they’ll continue to call for change despite the challenges. Gross wants to see more broad cultural changes at the police department beyond changes that have been adopted under the state consent decree.
“We’re five years out, we should have had major changes in the culture of the police department,” she said.
Many agree that despite the slow progress, Floyd’s killing has made the public more aware of police brutality.
“A positive outcome of this is that it woke a lot of people up to the injustices of Black and brown people and the system of policing,” said Cullars-Doty, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota.
