June 6, 2020
United States Representatives Emanuel Cleaver, II (D-MO) and Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO) today issued a joint statement regarding U.S. Senator Roy Blunt’s support of their calls for the U.S. Department of Justice to launch inquiries into the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN.
The following, in its entirety, is first-person from Congressman Cleaver and Congressman Clay:
“We are very pleased that Senator Blunt strongly supports our call for Attorney General William Barr to order the U.S. Department of Justice to launch both a Patterns & Practices inquiry and a Civil Rights inquiry into the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The same standard that applied in Ferguson should apply in Minneapolis too, and we hope that it leads to the kind of fundamental reforms via a consent decree as was achieved in Ferguson that transformed their police department and city government.
George Floyd was another in the long list of unarmed Black citizens who were denied their humanity, their dignity and their lives by racially driven deadly force exercised by local police without justification.
We cannot allow this utter contempt for Black lives and rejection of our common humanity to continue without consequences for not just the alleged murderer and other officers who stood by and did nothing to stop this crime, but by exposing and reforming the culture of police violence against persons of color that allowed this murder to happen.”
Emanuel Cleaver, II is the U.S. Representative for Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes Kansas City, Independence, Lee’s Summit, Raytown, Grandview, Sugar Creek, Blue Springs, Grain Valley, Oak Grove, North Kansas City, Gladstone, Claycomo, and all of Ray, Lafayette, and Saline Counties. He is a member of the exclusive House Financial Services Committee; Chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, International Development, and Monetary Policy; member of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress; member of the Committee on Homeland Security; and a Senior Whip of the Democratic Caucus.
