Journey for Justice

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Speaker 4 Welcome to Dateline, everyone. I'm Lester Holt, a new call for justice in America.
It was a defining movement of 2020 and perhaps of our time.

Speaker 4 Police shootings, protests, tragedies that just keep happening. Tonight, three families at the very center of this struggle have come together for the first time, united in a powerful plea for change.

Speaker 4 Here's Craig Melvin.

Speaker 9 2020 was a year like no other.

Speaker 10 Testing America at every turn.

Speaker 12 But it was the wave of police violence against African Americans last spring and summer

Speaker 8 that pushed many to the breaking point.

Speaker 18 Millions of protesters poured into the streets, heartbroken and angry over what many see as a long-standing pattern of police brutality.

Speaker 16 Who do you protect? Who do you think?

Speaker 21 George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ray Shark Brooks, Elijah McClain,

Speaker 21 and Jacob Blake.

Speaker 13 All tragically became household names in 2020, putting their families' grief on public display.

Speaker 3 in ways almost impossible to understand and thrusting the family members into unfamiliar roles at the head of a movement.

Speaker 27 The people marching in the streets are telling you enough is enough.

Speaker 28 Tonight, Dateline brings some of these families together for the first time.

Speaker 22 The siblings of George Floyd, who died under a Minneapolis police officer's knee.

Speaker 13 The father and sister of Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back multiple times by Kenosha, Wisconsin police.

Speaker 28 And the mother and son of Eric Garner, whose death from a New York City police officer's chokehold in 2014 in some ways gave rise to today's movement.

Speaker 32 This is my family.

Speaker 33 We didn't choose this family. This family chose us.

Speaker 34 They hope what they have to say, what many black Americans have said for decades about unequal systems of justice in America, will finally be heard.

Speaker 30 And they especially hope the Biden administration, which takes office in two weeks, is listening.

Speaker 3 First of all, how does it feel just being in the same room with people who have experienced the kind of loss that you guys have all felt?

Speaker 38 I think it's a kind of a unity

Speaker 38 because we've all have a certain bond now because we know what it is.

Speaker 38 to lose a loved one or to get a loved one so severely injured that it it takes a part of us.

Speaker 33 And it's so easy to look at each one of these people here and know they get it, man.

Speaker 3 They get it.

Speaker 32 Because you never asked to be in this situation.

Speaker 33 But for somebody else's racism,

Speaker 33 we're in this situation.

Speaker 33 Because we are not looked at like humans.

Speaker 17 Many black Americans routinely face small acts of racism in their everyday lives, but they're also aware that something small can quickly escalate into something dangerous.

Speaker 28 Just as it did this past Memorial Day when two Minneapolis police officers approached a car driven by 46-year-old George Floyd.

Speaker 18 Seen on this video that's become all too familiar, but still extremely difficult to watch.

Speaker 24 Please, was our bald hands.

Speaker 3 Do nothing.

Speaker 21 He had been reported for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill.

Speaker 3 Please, don't shoot me, man.

Speaker 16 Don't shoot me.

Speaker 15 Unarmed, Floyd was forced out of his car and handcuffed.

Speaker 13 Officers then tried to move him into the back seat of their police cruiser.

Speaker 3 Man, I'm scared of the fing, man.

Speaker 41 Two more officers arrived, including Derek Chauvin.

Speaker 3 I can't breathe, I will.

Speaker 39 Please! Who dragged Floyd out of the police car onto the street?

Speaker 43 Then he pressed his knee onto Floyd's neck.

Speaker 3 I can't breathe.

Speaker 45 Please kneel in my neck.

Speaker 12 Bystanders screamed at Chauvin to to stop.

Speaker 26 You can stop and he's breathing right now, bro. You think that's cool?

Speaker 3 Get off of his neck! Get off the camera!

Speaker 21 But while the other officers stood by, Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine and a half minutes.

Speaker 39 Mama, I love you.

Speaker 46 We still love you.

Speaker 3 I'm dead.

Speaker 13 George Floyd was pronounced dead a short time later.

Speaker 15 Video of the killing began to be shared widely that night. Filonis Floyd, a truck driver, was on the road when he saw the video.

Speaker 6 When he narrated his death, it was like a motion cinema picture. The man had his knee on his neck.
He didn't care. He had his hands in his pockets.

Speaker 13 George Floyd's sister Bridget still can't bear to look.

Speaker 38 I'm just not ready for that.

Speaker 38 But the video going viral,

Speaker 3 hey.

Speaker 38 What is going to be done?

Speaker 47 So what it went viral?

Speaker 38 What are y'all going to do about it now that the nation has seen it?

Speaker 22 To justice!

Speaker 13 That video, of course, produced a seismic shock.

Speaker 30 First in Minneapolis, where the reaction went from grief and determination

Speaker 18 to anger.

Speaker 20 Then the protests spread around the country, around the world.

Speaker 30 All this attention on George's death was quite overwhelming for the Floyds, a working-class family, a religious family who generally minded their own business.

Speaker 37 Were there moments where you thought, wow, this reaction, I can't get my head around this reaction, or was the reaction precisely what it should have been?

Speaker 48 The reaction?

Speaker 5 Black people, they're tired, man.

Speaker 5 Enough is enough.

Speaker 38 I think it was more trying to wrap it around.

Speaker 34 It just didn't seem

Speaker 3 what it was.

Speaker 18 That was wrong.

Speaker 20 The family had been pushed into the spotlight and realized they were at the center of a massive movement.

Speaker 5 This is a global movement.

Speaker 6 People in Paris, Ghana, just different places, they are looking and they're like, that was wrong.

Speaker 4 Welcome everyone.

Speaker 43 George Floyd's funeral was carried live on multiple networks.

Speaker 26 Everybody going to remember him around the the world.

Speaker 3 He's gonna change the world.

Speaker 13 As they laid their brother to rest, George Floyd's siblings decided they wanted to honor his memory and become leaders of that change.

Speaker 26 His death would not be in vain.

Speaker 15 And for guidance, they would turn to someone who knew exactly what they were going through because she'd been through it herself.

Speaker 38 I says, I know that you'll have a video and you have the nation behind you at this time, But don't think it's a slam dunk.

Speaker 50 When we come back, my son was killed five years ago today.

Speaker 4 The pain is still fresh for the family of Eric Garner.

Speaker 38 They always see us as armed and dangerous,

Speaker 38 and in reality, they are the ones armed and dangerous.

Speaker 51 This young man was crying for his mother at the end. That was like my son echoing from the grave.

Speaker 43 When Gwen Carr saw the video of George Floyd's death, she reached out to his family, people she had never met.

Speaker 38 I just felt like an echo. I felt like a need

Speaker 38 to be there to, like, for comfort, for support, for solidarity.

Speaker 37 Do you remember what she said when she called?

Speaker 52 Pretty much

Speaker 48 she'd been through it before and told us you have to get through it and you have to keep pushing.

Speaker 22 George's brother, Rodney, says he's grateful Gwen was there to show them the way.

Speaker 52 This situation, we didn't know how to react. And honestly, seeing her for the first time, I'm going to tear y'all talking about her, but just seeing that woman's strength.

Speaker 38 Because it was so new,

Speaker 38 and I knew the heartbreak that was there.

Speaker 38 I know, like, when this happens to you, you don't know which way to turn, who to turn to.

Speaker 50 My son was killed five years ago today.

Speaker 29 For many black Americans, the death of Gwynn's son, Eric Garner, is a painful and haunting memory.

Speaker 22 And another video that is still hard to watch.

Speaker 3 I'm minding my business. Please just leave me alone.

Speaker 15 On July 17th, 2014, two New York City police officers approached 43-year-old Garner on a Staten Island street, accusing him of selling Lucy's or untaxed cigarettes.

Speaker 3 I told you the last time, please leave me alone.

Speaker 19 Don't touch the police.

Speaker 22 When the six-foot-two-inch Garner resisted arrest, Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed him in a chokehold, a tactic long banned by the NYPD.

Speaker 19 Four additional officers then helped hold him down.

Speaker 13 After pleading, I can't breathe 11 times, Garner fell unconscious.

Speaker 21 An ambulance was called, and he went into cardiac arrest.

Speaker 19 Garner was pronounced dead about an hour later.

Speaker 22 He left behind six children.

Speaker 35 His namesake, Eric Snipes, is one of them.

Speaker 37 You were 20 years old when your father was killed.

Speaker 48 And I was leaving for college.

Speaker 3 I know.

Speaker 38 I know. We had got him already for college.

Speaker 37 How has that shaped you and your interactions, not just with police, but just with the world?

Speaker 48 It was hard. It was struggling.
And then watching a George Floyd video, it just like ain't no hope for us.

Speaker 46 Officer Chavin left his knee on George Floyd's neck.

Speaker 30 The events of 2020 were hard on young Eric.

Speaker 13 He felt the protests did nothing to change the fact that black men are killed disproportionately by police. And while government data on the topic is limited, several studies confirm he's right.

Speaker 18 A recent Harvard study concluded black people on average are three times more likely than white people to be killed during a police encounter.

Speaker 12 Eric wonders if police officers pay attention to what's happening.

Speaker 48 All these videos that go viral, they have to see them. It's just like they just don't have no remorse.
And we post to be calm when we have every right to be mad at the world.

Speaker 48 Why are y'all not sticking up for us? And y'all posted a serve and protect us.

Speaker 38 They always see us as armed and dangerous.

Speaker 38 And in reality, they are the ones that are the ones that are armed and dangerous. They looked at us as America's most wanted.

Speaker 38 And they can just shoot us or choke us out on the spot. They say get back!

Speaker 8 We say fight back!

Speaker 22 Gwynn remembers the outrage and media attention after her son died.

Speaker 16 I can't breathe.

Speaker 21 How his final words, I can't breathe, became a rallying cry for a movement.

Speaker 16 I can't breathe.

Speaker 20 That ultimately faded.

Speaker 38 It always started.

Speaker 33 It always starts.

Speaker 38 It always starts.

Speaker 3 It always starts.

Speaker 38 Always starts.

Speaker 45 But see, then it dies down.

Speaker 46 What's it not?

Speaker 16 What is it? What's it not?

Speaker 19 Many felt the reaction over George Floyd's killing seemed more intense, widespread, and potentially lasting.

Speaker 18 Demonstrations included people of all races, all ages.

Speaker 38 We need to stand up and say that Black Lives Matter.

Speaker 13 And members from both sides of the political aisle.

Speaker 22 Filonis was even invited to speak at a congressional hearing on police brutality.

Speaker 5 The same day my brother's funeral, I flew out to Washington.

Speaker 6 Had no time to make an adjustment, no time to grieve.

Speaker 49 Thank you for the invitation here today.

Speaker 49 to talk about my big brother, George.

Speaker 29 Filonis, the married truck driver who lived a quiet life in Houston,

Speaker 56 was suddenly an advocate.

Speaker 27 I can't tell you the kind of pain you feel when you watch something like that.

Speaker 26 When you watch your big brother, who you looked up to your whole entire life, die, die begging for his mom on a George and make the necessary changes that make law enforcement the solution and not the problem.

Speaker 37 You made headlines with that moving address to lawmakers. How did you arrive at a point where you could do that?

Speaker 6 Me going there, I was speaking for everybody, not just me, everybody.

Speaker 3 Amen.

Speaker 41 You didn't have to

Speaker 37 take that pain and turn it into this activism and this advocacy, but you have.

Speaker 4 Why?

Speaker 49 Unity, solidarity, everybody needs to stand together. And until I can get that satisfaction of understanding and knowing that I matter, my life matters here,

Speaker 6 it'll never be the same for me.

Speaker 26 I will have to keep protesting.

Speaker 19 But the summer was heating up and that resolve was about to be tested.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 57 Sitting there watching your child.

Speaker 3 A father overcome with emotion, sometimes you get tired, cries out for change.

Speaker 33 Our purpose is to change these laws. We're not asking.

Speaker 26 We're demanding.

Speaker 4 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 13 For weeks after George Floyd's death, protesters continued to fill the streets, angry and in tears.

Speaker 62 I won't be satisfied until I can wake up and have kids and have them not fear their lives just for being black.

Speaker 8 Most were peaceful and law-abiding, but some turned violent.

Speaker 36 Businesses were looted and properties destroyed.

Speaker 22 Then, on August 23rd, another flashpoint, another video that's still difficult to watch.

Speaker 63 118707 40th Street.

Speaker 16 I'm going to say Jacob Blake.

Speaker 45 Kenosha, Wisconsin police responded to a domestic dispute between a woman named Laquishia Booker and Jacob Blake Jr., a 29-year-old man with an outstanding arrest warrant for allegedly assaulting her.

Speaker 64 When police arrived, they got into an altercation with Blake as they tried to arrest him.

Speaker 56 The footage shows Blake walking to the driver's side of his vehicle.

Speaker 8 That's Officer Rustin Shesky coming close behind, gun drawn.

Speaker 43 Blake leans into the car as Shesky fires.

Speaker 21 Seven shots, paralyzing him from the waist down.

Speaker 30 Booker witnessed the shooting as her three kids with Blake sat in the back seat.

Speaker 65 You shot him numerous times for no reason. It didn't take all that.
Disregard that my kids was in the car at all. And you knew they was in there.

Speaker 30 But earlier this week, Kenusha County District Attorney Michael Gravely told reporters there was a reason

Speaker 17 Jacob Blake was holding a knife.

Speaker 66 The question to a jury would be, did Officer Sheski reasonably believe that the shooting at Jacob Blake was necessary to prevent being stabbed by him?

Speaker 28 The DA said Shesky would have had a strong case for self-defense and didn't charge any of the officers involved.

Speaker 22 Jacob Blake Sr.

Speaker 43 has insisted all along that there is no justification for what happened to his son.

Speaker 33 When does not listening to the police when they tell you to stop walking justify seven shots to the back?

Speaker 33 Anything they do to African Americans or brown people in this country is justified.

Speaker 33 with freaking hatred.

Speaker 3 Deep-seated hatred.

Speaker 33 Deep-seated hatred.

Speaker 21 Jacob Sr.

Speaker 23 is most angry about what he saw when he arrived at the hospital.

Speaker 37 You see your son, conditioned, paralyzed from the waist down, and he's handcuffed.

Speaker 33 That, now,

Speaker 3 when that happened,

Speaker 3 oh Lord.

Speaker 5 That strike my nerve.

Speaker 33 It was not a handcuff.

Speaker 33 It was a shackle.

Speaker 34 Where was he going?

Speaker 33 It's a mental jail. I was so enraged that I didn't talk to anybody.
I didn't talk to his mother, his sisters. I didn't talk to anybody the whole night.

Speaker 22 Jacob Jr.

Speaker 21 is still paralyzed and recovering with the help of his family.

Speaker 36 Mr.

Speaker 37 Blake, we know how he is physically, but emotionally.

Speaker 37 How is Jacob?

Speaker 33 He has pain 24 hours a day.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 33 it works on you.

Speaker 38 Take your time.

Speaker 37 It's okay.

Speaker 33 Sitting there watching your child

Speaker 3 go through this,

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 3 you can't go in there with him with tears, tears, and I don't get an off day.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry, y'all.

Speaker 38 No apology needed.

Speaker 33 So sometimes you get tired.

Speaker 15 And what these families have grown most tired of is a criminal justice system they say is neither fair nor equal.

Speaker 33 I tell y'all, there's two systems of justice. It is.

Speaker 33 There's a white system for white people,

Speaker 29 and there's just us.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 33 We don't get no justice. There's just us.

Speaker 15 And there's research to support their claims.

Speaker 28 Black people make up only 13% of the nation's population.

Speaker 18 Yet they represent a third of the prison population.

Speaker 35 So what do these families want to do?

Speaker 33 Our purpose is to change these laws.

Speaker 33 Our purpose is to implement what we want. We're not asking.

Speaker 26 We're demanding.

Speaker 34 What does having advocates like them, what does that do for the cause?

Speaker 47 I think it gives a face for the cause, a face for the movement.

Speaker 30 Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump represents the Blake and Floyd families and many others.

Speaker 37 Are you at all concerned that part of the legacy of 2020 is also going to be an anti-police sentiment that has been

Speaker 37 created in this country?

Speaker 29 I hope not.

Speaker 47 I think that we need

Speaker 47 police to do their jobs for everybody in America. That is to protect and serve us.
However, what we need is those good police officers to say something when they see bad police officers do bad things.

Speaker 9 But as the shootings and protests have shown, the debate over policing is far more complicated than that.

Speaker 13 And the police also have something to say about it.

Speaker 13 Coming up, he's shot in the back.

Speaker 53 Isn't that the very definition of excessive force?

Speaker 55 Law enforcement speaks out.

Speaker 23 Next.

Speaker 22 This is a room filled with pain.

Speaker 18 Families who've lost or watched loved ones suffer because of police violence.

Speaker 30 It's also a room filled with anger toward a profession that vows to protect and serve.

Speaker 37 If you could sit down face to face with someone who supports law enforcement,

Speaker 13 what would you say?

Speaker 48 Probably spit on them and walk out the room.

Speaker 20 All police officers are bad.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 3 I believe

Speaker 3 none of them.

Speaker 30 Jacob Blake's sister, Letitra Weidman.

Speaker 68 You sit us down in front of someone that calls themselves the law, but they're living above the law, and we are supposed to respect that.

Speaker 16 Don't trust us, don't please!

Speaker 29 We wanted to hear from the heads of police unions in the cities where George Floyd and Eric Garner died and Jacob Blake was left paralyzed.

Speaker 30 We also reached out to the police chiefs of Minneapolis and Kenosha.

Speaker 20 They either declined or did not respond to our interview requests, though someone did want to speak.

Speaker 69 It's important for law enforcement to acknowledge that there is a family. There are loved ones grieving in these cases.

Speaker 30 Jim Palmer represents the largest police union in Wisconsin, though not the officers in Kenosha where Jacob Blake was shot.

Speaker 69 The most common reaction that I encountered following the tragic death of George Floyd was one of outrage.

Speaker 30 But other cases, like the shooting of Jacob Blake, have provoked a more complicated response.

Speaker 69 There were a lot of officers that said, well, we shouldn't rush to judgment. We ought to know more.

Speaker 69 I think that was fair.

Speaker 41 But he's shot in the back.

Speaker 53 Isn't that the very definition of excessive force?

Speaker 69 It could be, is the answer. The courts have long held that officers can shoot a subject in the back if they're fleeing, if they pose a substantial risk to the officers or the public.

Speaker 69 I don't think sitting here today we have enough information to know whether that exists.

Speaker 36 In general, though, how do officers feel about

Speaker 37 being held criminally accountable for the use of excessive force that kills or injures.

Speaker 69 I think it's fair to say that no one wants a bad cop out of their profession more than a good one. If an officer breaks the law, they ought to be held accountable.

Speaker 37 The families that we talk to have said that policing in America is systemically racist.

Speaker 18 What do you say to that?

Speaker 69 There are systemic disparities that exist all throughout our country. And I think it's also perhaps unfair to say that all this should be laid on the doorstep of law enforcement.

Speaker 34 We put the question to someone who has studied policing.

Speaker 13 Philip Goff is a social scientist and Yale University professor.

Speaker 37 To those who would say there is not systemic racism in policing, you would say what?

Speaker 70 I'm sorry. That's what I'd say.
Because they're not looking at anything like real data.

Speaker 35 He points to overwhelming research showing anti-black bias in law enforcement.

Speaker 17 The best way to end it, he says, is not by changing what individual officers believe, but how they behave by rewriting police policy.

Speaker 70 If you do a policy in such a way that it drives day-to-day activity, you're building culture.

Speaker 70 That's how you change institutions, is you change culture.

Speaker 9 Though reinventing a culture, he admits, can be challenging.

Speaker 30 Consider the Minneapolis Police Department.

Speaker 44 In 2016, Goff started helping officials there rework rules on the use of force.

Speaker 70 During the time we were mostly there, 2016 to 2018, Minneapolis dropped their use of force by about 18%.

Speaker 70 Good news, right? And the communities within Minneapolis felt that their police department got less racist during the period of time when we were working.

Speaker 31 But he says he told officials repeatedly that those policies, new rules for how police used force, could be undermined by a few cynical officers.

Speaker 70 I said to Chief Rondo, who was there right now, you have a group of officers who don't care about the trainings. They are just waiting for you to get fired and for the next person to get in.

Speaker 28 He says, a month after their last conversation, George Floyd was killed by a veteran Minneapolis police officer with a history of complaints against him.

Speaker 70 You can make the argument that if trainings were better, Officer Chauvelin doesn't put a knee on the neck. or the other officers actually engage in the duty to intervene.

Speaker 70 There was a culture that the senior officer is not questioned, and that's what happened.

Speaker 28 Still, he believes police departments can transform toxic cultures in part by changing their makeup. He points to a recent study on Chicago's efforts to diversify its force.

Speaker 70 There's just brand new research showing that there are real substantial gains in lower arrest, lower stop, lower use of force, as black and Latinx folks join police forces.

Speaker 3 But activists like Ben Crump say they doubt police departments on their own can make the kind of profound changes that are needed.

Speaker 34 He wants the federal government to get involved, to free up money for more police body cameras, and to ban no-knock warrants and chokeholds.

Speaker 47 In many cities, the chokehold is still legal.

Speaker 30 But calling for change is one thing.

Speaker 33 Getting it, another.

Speaker 30 That's why at the end of last summer, Crump and thousands more, including some familiar faces, would would march to the nation's doorstep to demand action.

Speaker 71 Every black person in the United States is going to stand up.

Speaker 18 The only question was whether anyone on Capitol Hill would listen.

Speaker 26 Coming up.

Speaker 72 We can no longer use the excuse of being deaf to the cries of justice.

Speaker 73 Those police officers who are risking their lives, those good ones, they feel like they're getting kicked in the rear end.

Speaker 4 A debate and a defeat.

Speaker 37 Many said that your bill perhaps went too far.

Speaker 55 Maybe they should start going to some of these funerals that I go to.

Speaker 4 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 58 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 58 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 58 Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday.
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Speaker 10 These families say there are two ways of policing in America: one for white people and another for black people.

Speaker 38 We have to have two different conversations with our children. We have to tell them how to react when they're stopped by the police.
White people don't have that conversation.

Speaker 38 We have to say all these things. If you stop while you're driving, keep your hands on the wheel.

Speaker 73 Why do we have to have two different conversations?

Speaker 38 If we all American, we all paying taxes.

Speaker 68 And unfortunately, our young people don't even have that luxury of being young and having poor judgment. Because

Speaker 68 a poor judgment for a white kid in America gets you a slap on the wrist.

Speaker 67 A poor judgment for a African-American kid can get you killed.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 39 In the days following George Floyd's death, some progressives called for defunding police departments, a position that roiled many on the left and the right.

Speaker 56 Still, Washington scrambled to respond to the crisis.

Speaker 30 President Trump issued an executive order calling for changes in policing.

Speaker 75 We need to bring law enforcement and communities closer together, not to drive them apart.

Speaker 30 Republican Senator Tim Scott proposed a police bill that quickly died in the Senate after Democrats said it did not go far enough.

Speaker 31 In the House, Representative Karen Bass put forward yet another piece of legislation called the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

Speaker 76 The piece of legislation was a compilation of bills that members of the Congressional Black Caucus have worked on for years.

Speaker 28 The legislation was sweeping in scope.

Speaker 39 It would withhold federal funding for police departments in states that have not banned chokeholds.

Speaker 20 It would create a database for tracking problem officers, and it would lower the bar for federal charges and conviction.

Speaker 18 Right now, federal prosecutors have to prove an officer intended to kill.

Speaker 20 The bill would make it easier to convict by showing the officer who was acting recklessly.

Speaker 13 Would it make it easier to convict an officer accused of killing an unarmed civilian?

Speaker 55 Yes, it would actually take the criminal standard down from willfully to recklessly or knowingly.

Speaker 11 Representative Cedric Richman of Louisiana is one of the bill's co-sponsors.

Speaker 55 The standard right now, if you want to prosecute a police officer, is so high that it just shouldn't even exist because it's too hard to meet that bar.

Speaker 8 The bill even seeks to end what's called qualified immunity, making it easier for civilians to sue individual officers in federal court.

Speaker 44 Police representatives say that would have a chilling effect on the profession.

Speaker 69 I don't know who's going to do the job of policing in America if that's the standard that we're going to hold law enforcement officers to.

Speaker 40 America's conflicted attitudes on police reform

Speaker 40 USA!

Speaker 19 USA!

Speaker 13 Were being reflected by its politicians as the House took up the bill in late June.

Speaker 20 Democrats backing it.

Speaker 72 We can no longer use the excuse of being deaf to the cries of justice.

Speaker 21 Republicans largely opposing it.

Speaker 73 Those police officers who are risking their lives, those good ones, they feel like they're getting kicked in the rear end.

Speaker 19 Things got heated when Representative Richmond, a Democrat, accused Republicans of trying to water down the legislation with amendments.

Speaker 75 It is about black males, black people in the streets that are getting killed. And if one of them happens to be your kid, I'm concerned about him too.

Speaker 75 And clearly, I'm more concerned about him than you are. So let's be clear about that.

Speaker 75 You're claiming you're more concerned for my family than I do.

Speaker 47 Who in the hell do you

Speaker 18 think you're if the shoe fits?

Speaker 11 On June 25th, the measure passed, mostly along party lines, and headed to the Republican-controlled Senate.

Speaker 28 Worried about its future, members of the Floyd and Blake families and thousands more streamed onto the Lincoln Memorial to mark the anniversary of Dr.

Speaker 18 Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech.

Speaker 13 Their message to senators: pass that bill.

Speaker 21 Volonis Floyd gave a rallying speech.

Speaker 47 Everybody out here right now,

Speaker 24 our leaders, they need to follow us while we're marching to enact laws to protect us.

Speaker 56 Jacob Blake Sr.

Speaker 21 addressed the crowd too.

Speaker 71 No justice! No peace! No justice!

Speaker 16 No peace!

Speaker 37 Just days after your son had been shot, you decided to go to Washington and participate in the march. Why was that so important to you?

Speaker 33 Because my father was at the original march on Washington. My father marched from Selma to Montgomery.
You know, he was never fearful. He was ready to do what he had to do.

Speaker 33 I was never fearful. I knew I had to fight for my son

Speaker 33 so that everyone would know who he is.

Speaker 45 The event, a call to action, but also a time of shared pain.

Speaker 6 It's a lot of families, a lot of families that didn't go viral. I witnessed that in Washington.

Speaker 34 That's right.

Speaker 5 People were just walking up and telling me stuff. I was like, wow.

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 some stuff similar to them, it happened to us.

Speaker 6 But nobody cared

Speaker 6 because they didn't have the footage.

Speaker 22 But in the end, the voices raised here did not move the ones here.

Speaker 56 The bill did not make it to the Senate floor last year for a vote.

Speaker 37 Many on the other side of the aisle said that your bill, while well-intentioned perhaps, went too far.

Speaker 15 What would you say to them?

Speaker 55 Well, I would say that maybe they should start going to some of these funerals that I go to. Maybe they should talk to some of the families that I talk to.

Speaker 28 So now, after a long and dispiriting year, these families are left to wonder: does police reform, the kind they envision,

Speaker 64 really have a future?

Speaker 26 Coming up,

Speaker 4 where does the fight go from here?

Speaker 47 I think it's a journey to justice.

Speaker 38 There's other families out there.

Speaker 49 We got to keep pushing. We have to.

Speaker 28 The George Floyd Justice and Policing Act is sitting somewhere in the nation's Senate chambers, still waiting for votes.

Speaker 18 Still just a dream.

Speaker 11 And now we are back to where we started

Speaker 37 when the man who inspired that legislation became a household name.

Speaker 44 So much has and has not happened.

Speaker 35 But short hands,

Speaker 19 are you more optimistic about change

Speaker 36 coming as a result of what you've all experienced?

Speaker 38 Well, I could halfway raise my hand.

Speaker 44 This is a pessimistic group.

Speaker 68 It's not a matter of pessimism, though.

Speaker 68 Someone that's pessimistic will be presented with all of the facts that things are getting better, but they choose to just keep on believing negatively.

Speaker 68 That's not the case here. What we're being presented is a vicious cycle that keeps happening over and over and over in different forms.

Speaker 19 The way they see it, that stalled bill is a sign.

Speaker 56 Nothing changing, nothing moving to the next step.

Speaker 17 So, how can they?

Speaker 37 I've never been in your situation, but have you all gotten to a point where you are

Speaker 4 forgiving?

Speaker 62 How?

Speaker 68 After he gets seven bullets in his head, I tell. Then maybe I'll forgive him, but but until then, no.

Speaker 3 No one's going to have my forgiveness. None.

Speaker 48 How are we going to forgive the person that

Speaker 48 not only murdered our loved one, but is also out there walking in the street?

Speaker 70 Business as usual.

Speaker 21 In the Eric Garner case, a grand jury declined to indict the officer who used that chokehold.

Speaker 30 He was fired in 2019, five years after Garner's death.

Speaker 30 In the Jacob Blake case, where the D8 did not file charges against the officers involved, a federal investigation is ongoing.

Speaker 17 But in the George Floyd case, four officers were immediately fired and charged with crimes, including second-degree murder for Derek Chauvin.

Speaker 13 The officers have not yet pleaded in court.

Speaker 37 The events over the past year, what do you think they are going to mean for policing moving forward?

Speaker 69 Well, I hope it brings about the kind of change that we need to in this country.

Speaker 69 And if we, you know, just as a law enforcement community, don't take a more proactive role, then we shouldn't be surprised when, you know,

Speaker 69 the public reaction grows more severe and the calls for reform

Speaker 69 are more radical.

Speaker 28 Jim Palmer says his union has taken the initiative, calling for more body cameras, beefed up community policing, and de-escalation training for its members.

Speaker 17 Meanwhile, in Washington, there has, of course, been a big change that could affect federal policies.

Speaker 18 In two weeks, Joe Biden becomes president, and Cedric Richmond will be pushing for reforms in his new position as senior advisor to the president.

Speaker 37 What are you going to advise the president to do about policing reform in this country?

Speaker 55 My advice to him is going to be use political capital to try to get this done because at the end of the day, it saves lives. The fact that a president will say this is important, Let's talk about it.

Speaker 55 Let me convene different sides so that we can come together and address legislation i think that's a lot different than what we had

Speaker 28 but civil rights activists like ben krump say it's still up to average americans to keep the pressure on politicians to act he says history has taught us that you're optimistic i get the sense you're optimistic

Speaker 37 do you think though sometimes that perhaps

Speaker 37 With regards to race relations, we've gone backwards in our country?

Speaker 47 I think it's a journey to justice. I think about the precedence of how we overcame slavery.
I think about the precedence of how we overcame Reconstruction, how we overcame Plessy v.

Speaker 47 Ferguson, how we overcame separate but equal, how we overcame Jim Crow. Whatever they throw at black people in America,

Speaker 47 we're going to overcome it based on precedence.

Speaker 8 Gwen Carr's journey is proof of that.

Speaker 38 In the long run, we expect justice.

Speaker 22 After her son died, she struggled for years to get the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act passed in New York State.

Speaker 26 I've been fighting, I've been rallying, I've been going up to Albany, speaking with the lawmakers.

Speaker 20 The bill sought to criminalize police chokeholds, but for five years, she met resistance.

Speaker 19 Finally, after George Floyd's death, Gwynn had the public momentum she needed and prevailed.

Speaker 51 It was a long time coming, but it came.

Speaker 66 And thank you. Thank you all very much.

Speaker 18 The neck restraints used on Eric Garner and George Floyd are now illegal in the state of New York and punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Speaker 17 New York City police unions have filed a lawsuit to overturn the legislation, but the families in this room are prepared for obstacles.

Speaker 49 We got to keep pushing.

Speaker 6 We have to, because if we don't, it'll just be another dead body on the floor.

Speaker 32 Gwen, you...

Speaker 37 You've been doing this a little bit longer than they have. Yes.
Does it get easier?

Speaker 38 It doesn't get easier, but there's other families out there. There's generations that we have to save, and that's our job now.

Speaker 38 And as long as I think we stay together and become a bridge of strength, that we can do this.

Speaker 4 Their call for change is urgent.

Speaker 5 We need to hear it and heed it.

Speaker 4 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9, 8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 3 Good night.

Speaker 7 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 7 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

Speaker 7 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 7 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.