It’s been nearly five years since George Floyd was murdered.

The 46-year old Black father of five was arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill at a Minneapolis convenience store, prompting one of four police officers on the scene to kneel on Floyd’s neck and back for more than nine minutes, asphyxiating him.

Nationwide protests erupted in the summer of 2020, a so-called racial reckoning, shortly after a video of the killing surfaced online. Residents took to the streets demanding systemic change to policing and the prison system.

While some police departments have enacted reforms, that progress is now threatened under the Trump administration’s agenda to retract Biden-era initiatives.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it would do away with federal oversight of police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville and began the process of dismissing investigations in those cities and others — going back on previous DOJ findings about alleged constitutional violations from police departments.

Chicago’s consent decree will remain intact as it doesn’t involve the DOJ.

Some locals, like University of Chicago law professor Craig Futterman, worry about what precedent is being set by top officials.

“I am concerned on a national level,” said Futterman, who founded the Civil Rights and Police Accountability clinic. “What’s happening in the rest of the country cannot happen here, but it sends a message that people elsewhere will not be protected.”

Futterman noted that while progress for police reform has been slow in Chicago, progress has been made — particularly as it relates to violence prevention.

“The police are killing far fewer people than what we saw 10 years ago,” according Futterman, who said there’s a need for systemic changes — like eradicating “a culture of denial and secrecy” that allows officers to abuse the most vulnerable.

GoodKids MadCity founder Kofi Ademola is pushing for funds allocated to policing to be reallocated to community-based violence-prevention groups like the one he runs.

“Our system is dysfunctional and impunitive and racist,” said Ademola. “We need to tear down systems of incarceration and build systems that actually hold people accountable.”

From growing up as a teenager in the 1990s to being an adult who helps lead today’s youth, Ademola thinks stereotypes that paint young Black people as inherently violent have remained constant throughout the decades.

“We have to address that law enforcement and the prison industrial complex contribute to violence,” Ademola said.

Austin’s Police District (15th) has been cultivating partnerships with the community for the last few decades, especially at BUILD.

Bradly Johnson, chief community officer of the West Side-based violence-prevention organization, helps cultivate those relationships while teaching “know your rights” workshops to young people in Chicago.

“Seeing the George Floyd video hurt me because I saw myself, I saw my son, I saw the young people that I work with and that impacted me greatly,” said Johnson.

The Austin native believes things have changed for the better since the summer of 2020 but doesn’t necessarily think people’s hearts or prejudicial sentiments have shifted much.

“The mentality of seeing people as animals has not changed so that’s a re-education that has to happen,” said Johnson. “This is a national issue: the culture of policing.”

One former Chicago police chief emphasized that the discourse is not as simple as Black people versus systems of incarceration because some individuals live in both identities.

Ernest Cato is a 32-year Chicago Police Department veteran who said he tried to bridge the long-fraught divide.

“It’s a tricky position, but my life prepared me for it,” said Cato. “I had an idea of what folks felt like because of the community I came from, and I also knew I had a job to do. The difficult part was bringing them both together.”

Momentum from the 2020 protests spurred a cross-ideological effort to pass reforms, pushing Democrats in Congress to draft the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which remains stagnant.

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