In a summer of discontent seething under the Covid-19 restrictions and the economic distress the protests sometimes descended into rioting and looting of stores. The rage led to excesses like defacing destroying the statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, who had led the US in the Civil War to uphold the abolition of slavery.

After the verdict, Democratic Party member of the House of Representatives Pramila Jayapal described the movement’s agenda in a tweet: “We must put an end to police brutality, racism, and white supremacy. We can’t just say Black lives matter we must fight for Black lives.” There were widespread calls by many activists and Democrats to defund the police—cut police budgets and even disband police departments, which also resulted in a backlash as crimes shot up.

Policing is locally governed without a national police service or all-encompassing regulations. Most police departments are under the control of city, town or village officials. To overcome this, the House of Representatives has passed a bill named for him, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, to bring about national police reform, but it has not yet been adopted by the Senate. The legislation that Vice President Kamala Harris helped draft when she was a senator would prohibit police from using tactics like chokeholds or others like the one used on Floyd, require police to use body cameras and limit personal immunity for police from lawsuits.