“I don’t watch the footage of my dad’s incident because it is torture,” said Lora Dene King, whose father, Rodney G. King, was brutally beaten by the police in Los Angeles. “Here it is 30 years later and nothing has changed.”
At a friend’s home in Long Beach, Calif., Ms. King watched the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of murdering George Floyd in May. A video of Mr. Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck went viral on social media, setting off outrage and months of nationwide protests calling for racial justice and an end to police brutality.
Mr. Chauvin is facing charges of manslaughter, second-degree murder and third-degree murder. Three other officers who were at the scene are scheduled to go on trial later this year.
But the current national reckoning on racism and police violence is not new. We watched Mr. Chauvin’s trial with three families who have been affected by police violence to see this moment in history through their eyes.