Police Culture and Practices after George Floyd

Speaker Date: Oct. 29, 2021

The subtitle of a photographic exposition by E. Mackey currently at the Gantt Center, “Views from the Front Lines in the War for Black Lives,” calls attention to the problem.

If you watch the news, you’ve heard the now familiar cry at the protests Mackey documented: “Say their names!” Mackey’s project began after Ahmaud Arbery was murdered in Georgia (2020). The Black Lives Matter Movement began after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida (2012).

Arbery and Martin were killed by civilians, but more than a hundred others have died in recent years at the hands of the police. We have learned to say their names: Breonna Taylor (Kentucky 2020), Philando Castile (Minnesota 2016), Michael Brown (Missouri 2014), Tamir Rice (Ohio 2014), Eric Garner (New York 2014).

And, of course, the horrific, on-camera death of George Floyd (Minnesota 2020) that has served as a catalyst for change. The House of Representatives passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act on June 25, 2020. In the past year thirty states have enacted one or more legislative policing reforms. San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York have made significant changes.

Charlotte, too, has begun to reimagine policing and Mr. Brent Foushee will tell us how.