By David L. Snelling

Miami – May 25, 2025 marked the fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd, who was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer which sparked protests throughout the country calling for social justice and law enforcement reform.

But as family members, friends and social justice advocates paid tribute to him in Minnesota and his hometown in Houston, Texas, they were left heartbroken, again.

Five days before Floyd’s death anniversary, the U.S. Justice Department had dismissed charges, lawsuits and ended investigations against several local police departments for civil rights violations in high profile cases including the murders of Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Taylor was killed in 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky when the police forced their way into her home and shot her to death.

All the officers involved in Floyd’s death have been convicted in federal and state courts.

A federal jury also found Brett Hankison guilty of depriving Taylor of her civil rights for using excessive force and faces a long prison sentence.

In addition, Harmeet Dhillon, leader of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said the department is retracting findings of constitutional violations in six police departments, including in Memphis,

Tennessee, where all the officers involved in Tyre Nichols’ death have been federally convicted.

The department threw out the lawsuits and probes initiated by former President Joe Biden’s administration which was part of President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to give the police immunity from prosecution.

“We’re going to give our police their power back,” he said at a 2024 rally in Wisconsin. “And we are going to give them immunity from prosecution.”

However, critics say it’s Trump’s latest attack on Blacks and reaffirmed his link to racism including eliminating DEI policies that helped minorities overcome discrimination.

“I have known Donald Trump for years and I do believe he is a racist,” Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights and social justice activist and T.V. personality, said on his show about eliminating DEI. “But that’s not what we have to prove. Just look at his record… he has always race baited against Blacks. He once said a Black man was not a real American.”

Sharpton joined Floyd’s family members at Houston Memorial Gardens, where he was laid to rest and made a commitment to keep fighting for justice on their behalf.

“This was not a pity gathering, it was a recommitment,” Sharpton said on social media. “We came back to where George was buried to keep our promise to fight for justice, not just in name, but in policy, in policing, and in economic power. They may cancel consent decrees, but they can’t cancel our commitment.”

According to the DOJ, lawsuits and investigations into two dozen police departments including in Louisville, Kentucky and Minneapolis, Minnesota were dropped.

The department is also ending investigations into law enforcement agencies in Memphis, Oklahoma City and Phoenix as well as Trenton, New Jersey and Mount Vernon, New York, and the Louisiana State Police.

Under the Biden administration, the DOJ investigations into several police departments divulged a pattern of excessive force, discrimination against Blacks and free speech violations.

The DOJ investigations into the police departments led to changes for local governments on how officers handle people in custody including banning the choke hold and kneeling on an individual’s upper torso and wearing body cameras.

But the DOJ said probes and lawsuits to crackdown on police civil rights violations went far beyond the Biden administration’s accusations of unconstitutional conduct.

It also said Biden’s decrees would have imposed years of micromanaging local police departments by federal courts and excessive costs for independent monitors and compliance costs without a legally or factually adequate basis for doing so.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said their cities would continue to implement police reform work already under way.

Despite dismissing the lawsuits and investigations, Minnesota Human Rights Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said the state will continue its probe and police reform under the original federal agreement with the DOJ.

“Under the state agreement, the city and MPD must make transformational changes to address race-based policing,” Lucero said in a statement. “The tremendous amount of work that lies ahead for the city, including MPD, cannot be understated.”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represented the families of Floyd and Taylor in their lawsuits against the police departments, said the DOJ’s decision is a slap in the face to both families.

“And also to every community that has endured the trauma of police violence and the false promises of accountability,” he said in a statement. “These consent decrees and investigations were not symbolic gestures, they were lifelines for communities crying out for change, rooted in years of organizing, suffering and advocacy.”

Crump said he and other Black leaders will continue to fight for social justice and law enforcement reform despite the DOJ’s decision.

“Let me be clear: We will not give up,” he said. “This movement will not be swayed or deterred by fickle politics. We will continue to fight for the reforms we know are necessary. For federal oversight that holds police departments accountable.”

Family members, friends and social justice advocates gathered near the site of Floyd’s death to mark the anniversary of the tragedy and designed another mural in his honor.

Some reports indicated that lack of police reform and dismissing charges into civil rights violation cases might ignited more protests across the country.