page_title: George Floyd protests
section_title: Changes to police policies
hierarchical_section_title: George Floyd protests / Impact and effects / Impact on police activity / Changes to police policies
caption_attribution_description: English: George Floyd protests on their ninth day in Miami
context_page_description: The George Floyd protests are an ongoing series of protests and civil unrest which began in Minneapolis in the United States on May 26, 2020. The protests began as a response to the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man who was killed during an arrest after Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer, knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly eight minutes as three other officers looked on. Chauvin and the other three officers involved in the arrest which led to Floyd's death were later arrested.
  Local protests began in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota before quickly spreading nationwide and in over 2,000 cities and towns in over 60 countries in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Protests continued throughout June, July, and August, with polls at the time estimating that between 15 million and 26 million people had participated at some point in the demonstrations in the United States, making the protests the largest in United States history.
  While the majority of protests have been peaceful, demonstrations in many cities escalated into riots, looting, and street skirmishes with police.
context_section_description: In the wake of Floyd's killing, state and local governments evaluated their police department policies, and the response to protests, for themselves. For example, California Governor Gavin Newsom called for new police crowd control procedures for the state, and the banning of the police use of carotid chokeholds, which starve the brain of oxygen. The Minneapolis police department banned police from using chokeholds; Denver's police department also banned the use of chokeholds without exception, and also established new reporting requirements whenever a police officer holds a person at gunpoint.
  In June 2020, Democrats in Congress introduced the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020, a police reform and accountability bill that contains measures to combat police misconduct, excessive force, and racial bias in policing. The impetus for the bill were the killings of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other African Americans at the hands of police. It passed the House of Representatives one month after Floyd's killing, 236 to 181, with support from Democrats and three Republicans. A Republican reform bill was blocked in the U.S. Senate by all but two Democrats; neither party negotiated the contents of the bill with the other. Speaker Nancy Pelosi summarized Democratic opposition to the Senate bill: "it's not a question that it didn't go far enough; it didn't go anywhere".
  On June 16, President Trump signed an executive order on police reform that incentivized departments to recruit from communities they patrol, encourage more limited use of deadly force, and prioritize using social workers and mental health professionals for nonviolent calls. The order also created a national database of police officers with a history of using excessive force.
caption: "Defund the Police," a phrase popularized by BLM during the George Floyd protests
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D610", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic 8.2 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2020:06:07 22:51:30", "Image ExifOffset": "226", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "994", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "18979", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2020:06:07 15:22:13", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2020:06:07 15:22:13", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1040241/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-1/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "34", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "10", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "10", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "54886891/32768", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "54886891/32768", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "34", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "3029393", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[24, 120, 4, 4]", "EXIF LensModel": "24.0-120.0 mm f/4.0"}