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The family of George Floyd is ready to take applications from businesses for grants funded by money from their wrongful death legal settlement with the city of Minneapolis.
Floyd, who was Black, died in May 2020 after a White Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.
His family won a $27 million settlement from the city in March 2021 and set aside $500,000 for grants to businesses in the neighborhood where Floyd died.
George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 is two years overdue
PBS reports while governors in all but five states signed police reform laws, many of those laws gave police more protections as well. More than a dozen states passed laws aimed only at broadening police accountability; five states only passed new police protections.
States collectively approved nearly 300 police reform bills after Floyd’s killing in May 2020, according to an analysis by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland.
Yet federally, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 did not advance in the Senate. Bipartisan negotiations took place, but they collapsed by September 2021 after Black Republican Senator Tim Scott refused to come to an agreement.
In May 2022, President Joe Biden signed a wide-ranging executive order that aims to hold police accountable for excessive use of force.
With the Floyd family present, Biden said that in signing the measure, he sought to “address profound fear and trauma, exhaustion” that Black Americans in particular have experienced and to “channel that private pain and public outrage into a rare mark of progress.”
Floyd family pays it forward
Floyd family attorney Ben Crump says businesses can apply today and continue to apply until all dollars are distributed.
Grants will be awarded in the amounts of $5,000, $10,000 and $25,000, although larger grants may be considered.
Businesses can apply at www.theward8fund.org.