MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Relatives of Tire Nichols, George Floyd and Eric Garner – three Black men who died in violent confrontations with police officers – expressed frustration Friday with politicians who have failed to pass police reform legislation or worked to invalidate laws intended to to reduce the chance that citizens will come into contact with the police and end in death.
Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, told an audience at a symposium on police brutality in Memphis that the time has come for Congress to pass a federal law that would ban certain police tactics such as chokeholds and no-knock warrants. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, proposed after Floyd died in Minneapolis in May 2020 after a white police officer pressed his knee against his neck for more than nine minutes, passed the House in 2021, but the Senate failed to reach consensus to come .
“You have to know your politicians… because these are people who have no pressure to help,” Floyd said. ‘I’m not telling you what I want. I tell you what the world wants. We demand this…people have lost their children, their brothers and sisters.”
Floyd took part in a panel discussion with Nichols’ mother RowVaughn Wells and his stepfather Rodney Wells; Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother; and Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother. United by the murder of their loved ones and exposed, they have all worked to pass laws addressing police brutality and have pledged to continue their fight despite inaction and opposition in the political arena.
The symposium, organized by the National Civil Rights Museum, was part of a series of gatherings that brought together Black community leaders, policymakers, surviving families and activists to examine historical correlates of systemic racial violence.
Following Nichols’ death as a result of a beating by five Black Memphis police officers during a traffic stop in January 2023, his parents supported police-related ordinances passed by the City Council, including one banning so-called pre-text traffic stops for minor infractions, such as a broken taillight. But Tennessee’s Republican-dominated General Assembly passed a bill this month that would essentially repeal the ordinances in the predominantly black city, despite pleas from Nichols’ parents to find a compromise.
The bill awaits the signature of Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican and leader of the state who supported Republican Donald Trump in the past two presidential elections. Nichols’ parents said they wanted to meet with Lee, who has never vetoed a bill. The governor’s office has not publicly commented on the meeting request, but he did meet with them in early 2023.
“We are fighting very, very, very hard to prevent this bill from passing,” Rodney Wells said. “Memphis is different than the rest of Tennessee, so when you come in and say you’re going to override what we’re doing here, … it’s a slap in the face.”
Fulton has been pushing for reforms since her 17-year-old son was killed in Florida in February 2012 during a confrontation with neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. She has fought against Florida’s so-called “stand your ground law,” which removes the duty to retreat before using deadly force when in danger and was used as a self-defense argument during Zimmerman’s trial, resulting in his acquittal.
Fulton criticized moves by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to limit what schools can teach about racism and black history.
“It’s a divide between the politicians and the people,” Fulton said. “Politicians are their own little group, and the people are all of us… The people don’t understand what the politicians do, and the politicians absolutely don’t understand what the people want.”
Carr, whose son Eric Garner died in New York in 2014 after being put in a chokehold by a white police officer, also spoke. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. Weeks later, protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, over the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Carr lobbied for an executive order directing the New York Attorney General’s office to review cases in which unarmed civilians were killed by police. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, signed it a year after her son’s death.
“We never wake up from our tragedies. We have to live with that every day,” Carr said, referring to the nightmares she and her fellow panelists suffered. ‘It’s too late for our children. There is no justice for our children because they are gone. But we want closure, we want to move forward, we want to save other children.”
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Associated Press reporter Jonathan Mattise contributed to this story.