By Ray Cardello for June 01, 2025, Season 31 / Post 18

This week is the fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the span of approximately nine minutes, George Floyd died, Officer Derek Chauvin’s life was ruined forever, a national hero for the Left was born, and the city of Minneapolis was forever changed. Governor Tim Walz showed how inept he was as a leader, which is why he was chosen as the running mate for Kamala Harris in 2024. Just as Kamala was no threat to Joe in 2020, Walz was certainly none to Harris in 2024. Reporters went on live remote feeds to tell people about the friendly protests while images of a burning city formed a dynamic backdrop to the lies they were reporting. Jacob Frey, who is as poor a leader as Governor Walz, made the decision to abandon the 3rd Police Precinct, turning it over to a crazed mob of angry protestors hell-bent on destroying something, anything. Throughout Minnesota, there was an estimated $500 million in property damage, including more than 1,500 businesses and buildings that were burned. There also were more than 160 fires, some of which were investigated as arson. As Minneapolis was being destroyed, Frey asked Walz to activate the National Guard. Walz’s response was he would consider it. He finally made the call, but 26 hours later, when most of the downtown was already destroyed.

This event was the precursor to the Summer of Love, where Left-wing protest groups took over major cities like Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, with little pushback from any level of authority from city to federal. George Floyd did not survive the event, and many say he was a dead man walking with the amount of drugs in his system. Four officers were sentenced to prison for their roles in the event, with Derek Chauvin still serving his 18-year sentence. Three members of the prosecution team were rewarded, with one receiving a lucrative book deal and two given judgeships as a reward for their part in this bizarre debacle.

Governor Walz, Mayor Frey, the Police Chief, and the City Council surrendered the police and many members of the staff to feed the public frenzy. Three hundred eighty police officers left the Minneapolis Police Department after the riots following the death of George Floyd. A city block of downtown Minneapolis was named in honor of Geoge Floyd, a lifetime criminal and drug addict whose refusal to obey Police orders after he was arrested for passing bogus currency at a local bodega set off a series of events that would devastate one of our finer American cities. The city awarded the Floyd family $27 million to settle a wrongful death case against the city while the jury was being selected in the Derek Chauvin trial.

You are not hearing much fanfare about the anniversary of a situation that was handled poorly, covered up with a sham trial, a quick payout to the dead man’s family at the perfect time to taint the trial of the police officers involved, and the elevation of Black Lives Matter to national prominence, where it would eventually be exposed as a Ponzi scheme for a few to make a fortune at the country’s expense. It also brought us the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, signed by Joe Biden, that placed much of the blame for racial tensions on the police, leading many Democrats to gut local law enforcement. Scholarships in the name of George Floyd popped up on campuses across the country, including Eastern Nazarene in Boston, which eventually closed its campus forever.

This was a dark day that exposed our lack of leadership and how it could be made even worse to avoid racial pressure. The two officers who arrested Floyd were Black and Asian, but few talk about them, and only Derek Chauvin, who is White, is associated with this sad chapter in our history. Maybe the large mural built in Ohio to honor Floyd and ironically destroyed by a lightning strike a year later is a sign of how George Floyd duped America. Unfortunately, the people of Minneapolis will live with this bad memory forever, as it will never be the bright, beautiful city it once was.