This timeline depicts how the protests and the call for changes unfold across the United States.
The police in Minneapolis was called after George Floyd was allegedly caught using a fake $20 bill at a local Cup Foods. The video of the arrest can be seen below.
A video that has sparked outrage across the nation showed officer Derek Chauvin pinning the handcuffed 46-year-old black man’s neck on the ground beneath his knee for more than eight and a half minutes, including two and a half minutes after Floyd had passed out.
Floyd had been mentioning that he couldn't breathe yet Chauvin still continued to place his knee on Floyd's neck.
Officers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas K. Lane participated in Floyd’s arrest, with Kueng holding Floyd’s back, Lane holding his legs, and Thao looking on and forcibly preventing intervention by an onlooker as he stood nearby.
After the video circulates online, four Minneapolis police officers were fired. Protesters in Minneapolis marched and clashed with police dressed in riot gear and using tear gas. Stores were looted. Minneapolis Mayor called for criminal charges against Chauvin.
Demonstrators gathered at the Third Precinct and the site of the incident in what becomes the first night of protests in Minneapolis.
Demonstrators were skirmish with the police in Minneapolis. Officers used tear gas and fire rubber bullets into the crowd of protestors. Elsewhere, demonstrators closed a Los Angeles freeway.
Demonstrators torched a Minneapolis police station. Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz called in the National Guard. Protests spread to New York City, Denver, Los Angeles, Memphis, Tennessee, and Louisville, Kentucky, among other cities.
Prosecutors filed a third-degree murder charge against Chauvin. Protesters in Seattle’s Chinatown International District spoke out against police brutality. Protesters threw fireworks. Seattle police in riot gear used pepper spray and flash bangs against the crowd. After clashes, demonstrators smashed windows on South Jackson Street. Police arrested several and punched one person on the ground. Protests spread nationwide.
After four nights of chaos in Minneapolis, the mayor called on people to stay home. “What started as largely peaceful protests for George Floyd have turned to outright looting and domestic terrorism in our region,” he said on Twitter.
During the day, hundreds of thousands of people joined largely peaceful demonstrations throughout the country, but cities reported hundreds of arrests as protesters clashed with the police and some areas were looted. The National Guard is deployed in more than two dozen states to assist overwhelmed police departments, and dozens of mayors extend curfews.
In Philadelphia, a huge peaceful demonstration outside the city’s art museum contrast with the scene in West Philadelphia, where the police used pepper spray to repel looters. In Atlanta, two officers were fired for “excessive use of force” against two college students. In Minneapolis, about 200 protesters were arrested, and a man who drove a tanker truck toward a crowd was taken into police custody.
In remarks about the unrest in several cities across the United States, Donald Trump threatened to deploy the military to states where governors and mayors could not bring violence and the looting under control.
“If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents,” Donald Trump said, “then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”
Wearing “We Can’t Breathe” T-shirts and pumping their hands in the air, protesters gathered in Minneapolis on June 2 at the site of George Floyd’s death. A group of black faith leaders and clergy members also marched to the site.
Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, announced new charges against the three Minneapolis police officers who failed to intervene when Floyd died.
The three officers — Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao — were charged with aiding and abetting the killing.
Derek Chauvin, the former officer who pressed his knee onto Georgee Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, had his charge upgraded to second-degree murder and thus potentially carrying a longer prison sentence.
Martin Gugino, a 75 year old demonstrator, approached a group of officers during a protest about George Floyd’s death. An officer yelled “push him back” three times and one officer eventually pushes his arm into Gugino’s chest. Another extended his baton towards him with both hands. Gugino then fell backward. The video shows him motionless on the ground and bleeding.
Two Buffalo police officers were charged with felony assault on Saturday after a video showed officers shoving a 75-year-old protester, Martin Gugino, outside City Hall on Thursday night.
The officers, identified as Aaron Torgalski, 39, and Robert McCabe, 32, plead not guilty and were released on their own recognizance. The video showed the police officers appearing to shove Mr. Gugino, who then staggers backward and lands hard on the sidewalk. Blood was seen immediately pooling behind his head.
The third and final memorial service for George Floyd will be held Monday in Houston, the city he grew up in before moving to Minneapolis, where he died at the hands of a police officer.
Ex-Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, the officer who was seen on video kneeling on Floyd’s neck, is charged with second-degree murder, which comes with a maximum sentence of 40 years.
Chauvin is also charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, which come with maximum sentences of 25 years and 10 years respectively. It is unclear whether, if convicted of those additional charges, Chauvin’s sentences would be served concurrently or consecutively. That would be at the discretion of the judge.
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore and Los Angeles Police Commission President Eileen Decker agreed to an immediate moratorium on the training and use of carotid restraints on Monday. A carotid restraint compresses the neck arteries and restricts blood flow to the brain, rendering a person unconscious.
The Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement that the moratorium would be in place "until such time that the Board of Police Commissioners can conduct a detailed review." It follows a similar moratorium from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD).