Sunday marked five years since George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

The American people rose up in protest — to an inspiring and unprecedented degree. We demanded reforms to policing. We examined questions of race in our communities, in our businesses and organizations, in our civic structures. We talked seriously about systemic racism and undertook genuine efforts to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion.

But then came the (seemingly inevitable) backlash.

People who knew better went back to denying the obvious reality that law enforcement gets too much of our tax dollars to do too many things that it is ill-suited to do, if not downright hostile to doing.

Donald Trump won reelection largely on a campaign against “woke” and “DEI” — concepts he could not accurately define even if you offered to give him a superyacht (to go with the used jumbo jet the Qatari royal family is trying to unload on him) if he got them right.

So, where are we now? Here are just a few indicators:

1. The number of people killed by police in America has gone up — yes, up — every year since Derek Chauvin took George Floyd’s life in broad daylight on that Minneapolis street.

2. In 2024, police killed Black people at three times the rate they killed white people — a telling statistic essentially unchanged from before George Floyd was murdered.

3. In 2015, just 18 police officers were charged with murder or manslaughter after shooting someone while on duty. In 2024 — despite the supposed reckoning in the wake of George Floyd’s killing — that number went down, to 16.

4. Violence directed at Black and Brown people, women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews — anyone perceived as “other” in a culture forged through centuries of white male Christian dominance — makes the news day in and day out.

Just this past week, the United States Department of Justice — which has been weaponized under the direction of MAGA extremist and Trump sycophant Pam Bondi — abandoned federal investigations or oversight of nearly two dozen police departments with records of egregious misconduct.

That’s part of an overall pattern at the DOJ and throughout the Trump regime.
She may not listen, but let’s make sure Pam Bondi — who, as Attorney General of the United States, oversees the Department of Justice and law enforcement agencies all across America — hears us anyway.

To Attorney General Pam Bondi:

Do your job. Reinstate Department of Justice investigations and oversight of police departments with records of racism, brutality, and corruption. Uphold the nation’s civil rights laws. Launch investigations and prosecutions to address the outlandish and embarrassing corporate crime wave that is getting even worse under your watch. And use the power of your office to hold Donald Trump and his confederates accountable for any and all crimes they have committed, are committing, or will undoubtedly commit.

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Thanks for taking action.

For justice,

- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
 
 
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