What changed 5 years after George Floyd's death? Some say nothing

It was May 25, 2020 when a police officer from Minneapolis knelt on George Floyd's neck and killed him.

So what has changed, how the police interact with people in poor communities and how black civil servants are treated in their departments?

“Here we have changed five years later and nothing has changed,” said Cheryl Dorsey, who patrolled the LAPD on the streets for 20 years.

She is proud of her police, but she is also a critic.

“It is culture. It is the way the police authorities do business. It is institutionalized racism from top to bottom,” said Dorsey.

In a report by UCLA from 2022 it was found, as it called “considerable racial intergroup voltages”, and that “black officers feel silent and excluded”.

“So tell me that we have a lot of work for all of our employees within the organization to listen better,” Lapd boss Jim McDonnell told Eyewitness News.

McDonnell tells us that he wants to hear from the critics so that he can improve the department for both men in women in blue, and for those who live on the streets. But some want more of him, like the civil rights lawyer Connie Rice.

“Chief Jim McDonnell tries to look at these problems, but I'm afraid that they will not ask the right questions,” said Rice. “Not strategic enough, not deep enough, not really the third rails of disadvantaged, enemy work environments for black officers.”

Rice also believes that the LAPD does not do enough community police – if civil servants build relationships with the hot zones of crime.

And it considers this to be a reason why the city has previously taken over to the La Controller office in this financial year that the spread of violence and violation of civil rights lawsuits had to provide more than 52 million dollars.

The boss says he is everything for police work in the community, but he leads a group that is short hundreds of officers.

“Where we are so short and the ratio of officers to population is so slim,” said McDonnell. “This is a frustration that we have all the time.”

The frustration seems to have triggered a movement about five years after the death of a man who say many people in nothing.

“I wish I could see a difference,” said Dorsey. “I wish I had a little hope that I could share with others. Finally, finally, you know, George Floyd made a difference, but we know that George Floyd made no difference.”

Five years ago we often heard the expression “remove the police”.

But the LAPD was anything but determined. Five years ago, his budget was around 1.73 billion US dollars. Today it is 1.92 billion US dollars.

However, if you adapt this for inflation, today's LAPD budget is actually around 158 million US dollars.