George Floyd’s sister on Wednesday said that she thinks the Minneapolis officers shown on video arresting her brother shortly before he died should be charged with murder.
Bridgett Floyd, in an appearance on NBC’s “Today,” called for the officers involved in her brother’s arrest to face murder charges for his subsequent death “because that’s exactly what they did.”
“They murdered my brother,” she said. “He was crying for help.”
“I don’t need them to be suspended and able to work in another state or another county,” she continued. “Their license should be taken away. Their jobs should be taken away, and they should be put in jail for murder.”
Floyd told “Today” that she had faith that “justice will be served.”
“I have enough faith to stand on it,” she said.
The attorney for the Floyd family, Benjamin Crump, appeared alongside Bridgett Floyd and echoed her request for the officers to face murder charges.
“They have terminated them, but they need to be arrested, as Bridgett said, and charged with murder,” he said. “Because, how many more of these senseless excessive force killings by the people who are supposed to protect us can we take in black America, in all of America?”
Crump said he thinks George Floyd’s case may be a tipping point, adding that “we have to send a message with this case that we cannot allow those who are supposed to protect us … [to] do this.”
“If you could take your cell phone and set it for nine minutes and just sit there, America, and try to imagine a knee on your neck, suffocating you and you begging to breathe,” he said. “That’s why it has to be the tipping point that we have to say everybody deserves equal justice.”
A video of George Floyd’s arrest showed a Minneapolis Police Department officer kneeling on his neck and pinning him to the pavement as George Floyd repeated that he couldn’t breathe. He died at a local hospital.
The police department reported that the man had died of a “medical incident” after his detainment by the unnamed four officers. George Floyd was detained after a report of forgery in progress.
The local police chief announced Tuesday that the FBI would lead the investigation into George Floyd’s death. Later Tuesday, the officers were fired from the department.
Protests ensued in Minneapolis overnight as hundreds of demonstrators marched from the site of George Floyd’s arrest to the Minneapolis Police’s 3rd Precinct building.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday called for “a thorough investigation” into the incident.
“George Floyd deserved better and his family deserves justice. His life mattered,” Biden tweeted Tuesday evening.