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You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. -Harper Lee

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Being brave is so much more than fighting and violence. Atticus never fought, but they way he stood up for Tom Robinson despite what everybody else thought was extremely brave.

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This is one of many advertisements from sports and clothing companies who all came together to make powerful ads about racism whilst not promoting any products.

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"Scatman, fat man, black and white and brown man, tell me about the color of your soul"
-Scatman John

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If you arent going all the way then why go at all.
Joe Namath

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In the book To Kill a Mockingbird and in real life situations people with different colored skin are treated different than people with white skin.
-Shelby Olkonen

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¨an´ Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn´t done any of those things...Atticus, he was real nice.¨   ¨Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.¨

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¨an´ Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn´t done any of those things...Atticus, he was real nice.¨   ¨Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.¨

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This is a good reminder that we can not judge people by how they look or the color of their skin. When we actually get to know people you see the good in them.

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I think that this quote is important because people never know things about people until they're finally pushed into their view of everything.

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This is important because for Tom Robinson to go to court and say that he didn't do what he was accused of, would have been really hard. He knew that people would hate him before he could say anything.

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Rubin (Hurricane) Carter served 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Tried by an all white jury. 

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Rubin (Hurricane) Carter served 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Tried by an all white jury. 

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How can the life of such an man
Be in the palm of some fools hand.
To see him obviously framed.
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land .
Where justice is a game
-Bob Dylan-

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12-year-old sings song about living life as a young black man l GMA Digital

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This is similar to how Mr. Link Deas testifies that Tom is actually a good person, even though he's not black.

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Recently, a white woman accused a black man of "threatening" her and called the police. She told the man that she would tell the police that a "African-American man was threatening her". She knew her skin color and her privilege would get the man in trouble and she called the police out of spite. She knew the dangers of calling the police on this man and did it anyway. This reminds me TKaM very very much. False accusations are dangerous especially with the horrible justice system we have.

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In a racist confrontation with a black bird-watcher in Central Park, her choice of words was striking.

Christian Cooper shows the video that has gone viral of him and Amy Cooper in Central Park on Wednesday. Credit... Brittainy Newman/The New York Times

Of all the ways Amy Cooper might have expressed her exasperation during a dispute with a birder in Central Park - rolling her eyes as she agreed to restrain her cocker spaniel, railing against avian life-forms, giving him the finger and moving on - she instead chose a potentially lethal option. Confronting her adversary, Christian Cooper, she said that she was going to call the police to report that "an African-American man" was "threatening" her life.

It was the dissonance in her language that immediately distinguished the episode from the countless other occasions in which white people have become dangerously unhinged in the presence of black men.

Three times, before and during the 911 call in which her voice climbed to horror-movie pitch as she leveled a phony accusation, she found the space to specifically identify Mr. Cooper as "African-American." A resident of the Upper West Side with a graduate degree from the University of Chicago, a rescue dog and a face mask, Ms. Cooper engaged in a calculated act of profiling even as she accommodated the dictates of progressive speech.

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Video Shows White Woman Calling Police on Black Man in Central Park

The footage shows Amy Cooper calling the police on Christian Cooper in Central Park after he asked her to keep her dog on a leash. The video was posted to Twitter by Mr. Cooper's sister.

Amy Cooper: "Would you please stop? Sir, I'm asking you to stop." Christian Cooper: "Please don't come close to me." "Sir, I'm asking you to stop recording." "Please don't come close to me." "Please turn your phone off." "Please don't come close to me." "If you're taking pictures, I'm calling the cops." "Please, please call the cops. Please call the cops." "I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life." "Please tell them whatever you like." "Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm in the Ramble, and there's a man, African-American, [inaudible]. He is recording me, and threatening me and my dog. There is an African-American man - I am in Central Park. He is recording me, and threatening myself and my dog. I'm sorry. I can't hear you either. I'm being threatened by a man in the Ramble. Please send the cops immediately. I'm in Central Park in the Ramble - I don't know." Christian Cooper: "Thank you."

The footage shows Amy Cooper calling the police on Christian Cooper in Central Park after he asked her to keep her dog on a leash. The video was posted to Twitter by Mr. Cooper's sister.

The moment provided a bracing tutorial in what bigotry among the urbane looks like - the raw, virulent prejudice that can exist beneath the varnish of the right credentials, pets, accessories, social affiliations, the coinage absorbed from HBO documentaries and corporate sensitivity seminars.

Two years ago, a Manhattan lawyer named Aaron Schlossberg announced to the world that he was not "a racist" after he was caught on video ranting about immigrants. As he put it in his apology, the tirade did not capture who he really was, someone who had come to New York "precisely because of the remarkable diversity." As it turned out, this was not Mr. Schlossberg's only ethnically charged outburst.

In the video Mr. Cooper recorded, after Ms. Cooper refused to follow park rules and leash her dog, he asked her to keep her distance. Still, the next day, she told CNN by way of explanation for actions she now deemed inexcusable, that she had been scared - that before he began filming her, Mr. Cooper appeared out of nowhere.

"He came out of the bush,'' she said, failing to recognize, given the racial context, that there was surely a better way to refer to the shrubbery of central Manhattan.

Judgment of Ms. Cooper was swift and fierce. Within 24 hours, she had lost her job as an investment manager at Franklin Templeton; members of New York State's legislature introduced a bill that would make filing certain false reports actionable as hate crimes; a neighborhood group, the Central Park South Civic Association, called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to impose a lifetime ban from the park "on this lady for her deliberate, racial misleading of law enforcement."

Despite Ms. Cooper's public statement to Mr. Cooper - "I hope that a few mortifying seconds in a lifetime of forty years will not define me in his eyes and that he will accept my sincere apology" - by Wednesday night, various city officials were demanding her arrest.

It was Mr. Cooper who publicly extended more generosity toward her than anyone else, telling my colleague Sarah Maslin Nir that although he could not excuse the racism, he wasn't sure if Ms. Cooper's life "needed to be torn apart."

In the most forgiving interpretation of these events, Ms. Cooper didn't understand the possible consequences of her actions - that calling the police to settle an argument between a white woman and a black man in 2020 could result in his injury or death. This would imply that the news of the recent past has managed to completely elude her - from the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., to Eric Garner's in Staten Island, to Ahmaud Arbery 's in Georgia.

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Protests this month in Bruswick, Ga., after the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery. Credit... John Bazemore/Associated Press

As she told New York's NBC station on the day of her eruption, she was only now beginning to understand that the police do not always serve as a "protection agency.'' And yet in her precise use of the respectful term "African-American," such intimations of ignorance are easily challenged.

It is easy to imagine an investment house deciding it no longer needed an executive capable of such spectacular misjudgment assessing and managing risk. Franklin Templeton fired Ms. Cooper, the company proclaimed, because it "doesn't tolerate racism of any kind,'' sanctimoniously turning a crisis into an opportunity to showcase values.

Whatever becomes of Amy Cooper, the episode suggests the limits of our institutional efforts to pre-empt individual actions that would appear to be racist. Like most big corporations, municipalities and nonprofit organizations, Franklin Templeton promotes its agenda in what is now known as diversity and inclusion. By one estimate, American companies spend approximately $8 billion a year trying to ensure that their employees are welcoming and open-minded - an investment in comity as much as it is in public relations and liability protection.

Franklin Templeton, for example, requires employees to take anti-harassment training every year, meant to cover discrimination in its many forms. It also encourages them to participate in training programs that support an "employee's feeling safe to bring their whole selves to work,'' according to a spokeswoman. In November, the company held an event called the "Check Your Blind Spots" tour at its California headquarters, described in a news release as a "series of immersive and interactive elements including virtual reality, gaming technology and more, to take an introspective look at the unconscious biases people face on a daily basis."

Implicit bias training begins with the premise that we are essentially benevolent in our intentions, but are all subject to maintaining conditioned prejudices, the acquisition of which is often beyond our control. Embedded in this view is the assumption that within the contours of civil society, at least, we should be beyond explicit expressions of hostility of the kind Ms. Cooper displayed.

Patricia G. Devine, a social psychologist at the University of Wisconsin who studies unintended bias, argues that there has been little rigorous evaluation of the training strategies deployed to combat it, and as a result we simply don't know enough about what makes a difference.

"It often has the feeling of being a one-and-done kind of thing: 'We did it,'" she said. "And then it's the 'it' that matters." Beyond that, she has seen in her own research and the research of others that "if people are hostile to the training, it's like fingers being wagged at you, and if you are not at all open to that, it can fuel negativity to the point of backlash."

Two years ago, New York City's police department invested $4.5 million in implicit bias training for officers, again without any evidence that it might succeed. The Covid crisis, in a sense, has provided a test case, and the results have been dispiriting. Between mid-March and early May, of the 125 people arrested for violations of social-distancing rules and other regulations related to the coronavirus, 113 were black or Hispanic. The problem with implicit bias work is that it too often fails to acknowledge the realities of instinctive distaste, the powerful emotions that animate the worst suppositions. It presumes a world better than the one we actually have.

Further elaborating her apology to Mr. Cooper, in a statement she issued on Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Cooper said she was aware that "misassumptions and insensitive statements about race" caused pain. But Ms. Cooper's transgression was not a mistaken perception or an insensitive statement.

The language - "African-American" - she seemed to have down. It was the deeper impulse for retaliation that she couldn't suppress.

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Why Amy Cooper's Use of 'African-American' Stung

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In a racist confrontation with a black bird-watcher in Central Park, her choice of words was striking. Of all the ways Amy Cooper might have expressed her exasperation during a dispute with a birder in Central Park - rolling her eyes as she agreed to restrain her cocker spaniel, railing against avian life-forms, giving him the finger and moving on - she instead chose a potentially lethal option.

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In this article a black man is held at gunpoint for running a stop sign. The worst part is that apparently the black man was struck in the face by a police officer while in the police car.

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In this article a black man is held at gunpoint for running a stop sign. The worst part is that apparently the black man was struck in the face by a police officer while in the police car.

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https://www.insider.com/video-shows-grandmother-shield-grandson-as-police-brandish-weapons-2020-5

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf8VD9UU7CI
Kid Days is a song, a song that my cousin wrote. (He is a mighty fine musician.) This song talks about youth, and taking full advantage of your "Kid Days". I think this relates to the book To Kill a Mockingbird in multiple ways, obviously it relates to the youth and innocence of the children who are main characters in the book. But another way, what I thought of first, is: the song uses a metaphor, "should've done them kid days different, should have asked that girl to dance" I think this represents America as a whole, and the racism that has plagued it because of how the country lived its "Kid Days."

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the picture below (if it loads) doesn't seem relevant, but the rest of the article is.

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As she confronted the birdwatcher who asked her to leash her dog in Central Park, Amy Cooper never hurled racist slurs. She did not assault the black man, Christian Cooper, who was filming the interaction. She did not assault his property.

The damage that Ms Cooper, a white investment banker, threatened was implied: that the police would not respond in his favour because of his race.

"I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life," she says on the video as she dials.

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Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

With the video came the public outrage: another episode of #LivingWhileBlack - another black resident threatened with law enforcement intervention by another white neighbour in another liberal bastion of diversity.

Politicians across the country have proposed legislation that hopes to curb the practice by issuing fines or criminalising police calls that make false or trumped-up allegations, particularly against people of colour.

New York State Assembly member Felix Ortiz on Wednesday revived a bill he first proposed in 2018 to add a hate crime enhancement to the charge of fabricating a criminal report if bias is involved. The hate crime enhancement, when applied to other criminal charges like murder or assault, can render a more severe sentence.

Four states - New Jersey, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington - have recently considered bills that would criminalise calling the police when crimes have not occurred, some specifying calls that "unlawfully discriminate" or target "protected classes".

Two states have passed laws. Oregon's took effect on 1 January and Washington's law takes effect on 11 June.

Washington, which unanimously passed its measure in the state House and Senate, elevated false reporting from a "gross misdemeanour" to a felony under specific circumstances, such as if someone is killed.

Legislators wrote in the bill that false reporting has been "weaponised" and often against "protected classes" of people.

No hype, just the advice and analysis you need

Seattle state representative Javier Valdez, one of the sponsors, said on his website that punishment could include 10 years in prison if the call "directly leads to someone's death". Swatting, in which a 911 caller falsely reports a life-threatening crime so heavily armed tactical units will swarm an innocent person's house, "has disproportionately targeted communities of colour, the LGBT+ community, and religious communities", he said.

Much of the legislation was filed in response to viral videos: a white woman who called the police on black people for having a barbecue in Oakland, California; a golf course that called the police on a group of black female golfers in Philadelphia; a white father who called police for a black visitor "trespassing" at his San Francisco apartment building.

In one especially notorious encounter, police in 2009 arrested a distinguished black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr, at his own home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after a white woman called the police to report a possible break-in.

The string of cases shows the most prevalent forms of racism are often not obvious or easily outlawed. Even in diverse, urban areas, racist views can lead to tragic consequences for residents of colour, said Robin DiAngelo, an affiliate associate professor of education at the University of Washington, and an expert on racial identities.

"Odds are on a daily basis, people of colour are not running into the Richard Spencers of the world," said Mr DiAngelo, who is white. "On a daily basis they're running into me: I'm their co-worker, I'm the person in the park. And in fact, most of the daily racism that people of colour experience come from well-meaning, well-intentioned people who would identify as progressive."

Ms Cooper's "use of police power to enforce the racial order" has a long history that crosses geographic and political boundaries, said Paul Butler, a Georgetown University law professor, and a former prosecutor, who specialises in criminal law and race relations law.

"She summoned a whole tragic history of white women falsely accusing black men, and she did all of that just because he was impertinent enough to ask her to put a dog on a leash," Mr Butler said.

Ms Cooper issued an apology on Tuesday, and her firm said it had terminated her. She could not be reached for comment.

"We do not have a complaint on record from either party in this case," said Sergeant Jessica McRorie, a New York police spokesperson. "We have been in the process of reviewing the incident. We've been in touch with the Manhattan DA. We will go where the evidence leads."

Mr Ortiz, the New York assembly member, conceived of his legislation in 2018 after hearing about false reports against people of colour around the country, including when a Minnesota woman falsely accused four black teenagers of holding knives and carrying out an assault. The proposal gained momentum in Albany after the Central Park encounter went public, with a member of the state Senate agreeing to sponsor the parallel version of the legislation. The bill would need to be passed in both houses of the legislature and would need the support of governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, whose office has been consumed by its response to the pandemic and a phased reopening of businesses.

The goal, Mr Ortiz said, "is to create and bring awareness to people that this is something that is unacceptable".

Other jurisdictions have made similar efforts, including a city ordinance passed last year in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which created a $500 (£408) civil infraction for "knowingly or recklessly" reporting someone to the police on the sole basis of their race, gender or other bias. The city has yet to levy the charge.

Oregon's law allows people to seek financial damages for reasons such as emotional distress brought on by such calls placed to police.

The law aims to prevent the actions of those who would try to use the police to "unlawfully discriminate against the other person", its text says. State representative Janelle Bynum, a Democrat, together with two other black legislators, proposed the law after she said a white resident called 911 while she was out campaigning.

Mr Butler and other legal experts said such charges, including a hate-crime enhancement, can be a double-edged sword. "Harsh criminal justice policies rarely work to the advantage of black and Latino minorities," he said.

Prosecutors also often decline to levy hate crime enhancements - even when they are an option - because it can be difficult to prove racial bias.

More problematic, legal experts say, is that police still have the broad authority to detain people if they are called to a scene. Besides passing laws to punish racist 911 callers, some scholars have suggested reducing police powers to prevent the harm associated with false arrests.

"If there's no videotape and police have to choose who they want to believe, there's a lot of discretion that police exercise," said Sarah Seo, an associate professor at the University of Iowa College of Law.

In addition to putting a reported suspect's life at risk, a call to the police can create a host of other dangers that are difficult to monitor, Ms Seo said. A landlord faced with the choice between renting an apartment to someone with an arrest on his record and someone without might select the one without.

"An arrest record can do a lot of damage," she said. "It affects employment, admissions for schools, housing, all sorts of things."

A close, if uncomfortable, examination of racism's prevalence - including in such supposed liberal bastions like New York City, and among supposedly liberal white people, might be more fruitful, said Brian Levin, a criminologist who directs the Centre for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino.

"Amy Cooper won't do this again. But the next Amy Cooper is going to be influenced by the same influences, and the same impulses," he said. "We need to have conversations . . . Most people who commit hate crimes are not hardcore skinheads and Klan people. And I think what it shows is that when people are under stress, this latent racism will become operational."
The Washington Post

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Calls to police over people #LivingWhileBlack lead states to consider new laws

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As she confronted the birdwatcher who asked her to leash her dog in Central Park, Amy Cooper never hurled racist slurs. She did not assault the black man, Christian Cooper, who was filming the interaction. She did not assault his property.

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quote

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To Kill a Mockingbird  | Chapter 17 Summary & Analysis | Harper Lee

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-Alex R.

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"How frail the human heart must be -- a mirrored pool of thought. So deep and tremulous an instrument of glass that it can either sing or weep." -Sylvia Plath

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“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” - Atticus Finch (Harper Lee, TKaM)

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“An eye for an eye makes the world blind.” – Mahatma Gandhi

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"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have." -James Baldwin

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Racism is not getting worse, it's getting filmed. - Will Smith

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Racism is not getting worse, it's getting filmed. - Will Smith

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(Joe)

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it was a very boring dry book and i did not enjoy it.

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Izzy (I don't know where this quote came from, but I thought it was good)

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Izzy (I don't know where this quote came from, but I thought it was good)

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"Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good luck pennies, and our lives."-Harper Lee pg 278

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"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason not to try to win."

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-Oliver Proulx

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"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience"
-Harper Lee

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"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view" -Harper Lee pg 30

Matt C

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"No two leaves are alike, and yet there is no antagonism between them or between the branches in which they grow" -Gandhi

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"No two leaves are alike, and yet there is no antagonism between them or between the branches in which they grow" -Gandhi

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"One false accusation was all it took. The society became the pack of wolves and he became prey." - Nitsy

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"People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for." - Atticus Finch

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¨Simply because we were licked 100 years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win¨

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¨Simply because we were licked 100 years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win¨

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"The breath of accusation kills an innocent name, and leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, which is a mask without it." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

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"I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks."
-Atticus Finch

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This reminds me of one of the main events in TKaM.
Also it's Matt.

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"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." Atticus Finch, p.30

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"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." Atticus Finch, p.30

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Jackson

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After the death of Ahmaud Arbery, Morning Edition asked for your reactions to the killing in the shape of a poem. The 25-year-old black man was shot and killed by two white men while he was out for a jog in February in Glynn County, Ga.

When video of the incident was released, it was met with public outcry and protest. In the weeks since, we've seen more outrage accompany new headlines about African Americans killed by police. Dreasjon "Sean" Reed was shot and killed in Indianapolis. Breonna Taylor, an emergency medical technician in Louisville, Ky., was shot eight times in her bed. And Monday night Minneapolis, another black man died in police custody; a video shows George Floyd pleading with an officer whose shoe is on his neck.

The art that comes from hurt and pain is compelling and formidable. We received over 1,000 entries - an emotional outpouring of poems and reflections what it means to be black and safe in America today.

NPR's poet-in-residence Kwame Alexander took lines from the many submissions to create a community poem. Contributors are credited at the bottom.
Running For Your Life
What is the color of air?
Who owns the right to breathe?
Why are we so afraid of each other?
When will they come for the brown men I know and love?
What was his crime?

Is there justice for all In the land of the free?
Or only those who are
White like me?

What is the vaccine for this "pandemic"?
I wonder where my baby is?

My country, 'tis of thee ... we must raise the skeletons
buried deep in our past,

1880
1890
1920
1990
2020
"Give it time," White Fragility says.
Nothing moves forward
until this hunting stops
a knife on our collective tongues

Please stop running
from the truth
and listen:

This death was everyone's fault.
This is on you, young America

We must accept the lingering shame and guilt,
the anger and mistrust inequality have instilled,
apologize for the damage commit to sow a future with humility.

While we await such a day,
Let us say your name:
Ahmaud Arbery,
Ahmaud Arbery,
Ahmaud Arbery.

I am sorry that we all know your name now;
That we will forget it far too soon.

I am sorry that the only song they know to sing for you is tragedy.
I am sorry that all I can do is write this poem

I am sorry that your life has become a metaphor:

a house being built, down the road,
He liked to mark its progress,
dream of building one himself,

Eyes shine through windows,
Like raccoons in the woods at night,
Their faces twisted, pink, and hot,

He knows these trees, and their strange fruit,

Of thee I sing.

After bullet leaves chamber
it cannot be recalled

My heart rages for another mother's loss of her son
for the blindness

for the cover up
for the tears not enough to wet the graves

of so many lost for the sake of insanity:

his first words: Don't Be Afraid
a black boy jogging in the morning

There is an essential difference between running

and running for your life.

I remember my mother, the night
she got down on her hands and knees
on the frayed rug,

Tired of the facade of racial progress

Pain too hard to bear,
fists pumping out the beat,
"I can't take it anymore."

I don't fear the pick-up trucks
It's only the dogs sometimes, when there are two or more, and mean,
Who charge out onto the road, hair raised along their backs, barking and growling.
Coming up behind me.
Looking for a chance to bite.
My deepest fear is that I am black and that I will be murdered for it.

They are young men
simply going about their lives

Never, ever again, should a dream be deferred,
should a parent have to explain

We fight to be a world of one

We fight for our humanity
because after leaves fall they cannot be reattached
to the tree

because broken hearts still beat

because Justice peeks her head
around the corner.
And hope the door doesn't slam.

This community poem was created using submissions by:

Ameera Pearsall, Milwaukee

Catherine King, Omaha, Neb.

Chelsey Brunelle, Glendora, Calif.

Kathryn Ing, Los Angeles

David Calvin, Charlotte, N.C.

Angela Snyder, Borden, Ind.

Mary Battle, Augusta, Ga.

Kim Klugh, Lancaster, Pa.

Jade G, Concord, Calif.

Laura Tate, Cortland, N.Y.

Natalie Wilkinson, Newburgh, N.Y.

Marilyn Johnston, Salen, Ore.

Mary Donahue Brown, Pittsford, N.Y.

Mary Carter, Nashville, Tenn.

Skooter Fein, San Francisco

Isabelle Hart, Naples, Fla.

Tony Miller, Wellman, Iowa

Barbara McCarley, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Jennifer Greenow, Scotia, N.Y.

Jessica Bartley, Portland, Ore.

Laura Vinton, Estero, Fla.

Jose Salabarria, Houston

Kara Kral, Twin Falls, Idaho

Lisa Stolar, Trenton, N.C.

Bambi Vargo, Kirtland Hills, Ohio

Meriel Martinez, Tampa, Fla.

Clare Cranford, Paso Robles, Calif.

Rhiannon Schmidt, Houghton, Mich.

Rachel Olatunji, Wilmette, Ill.

Diana Torres-Guillén, Madera, Calif.

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'Running For Your Life': A Community Poem For Ahmaud Arbery

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After the death of Ahmaud Arbery, Morning Edition asked for your reactions to the killing in the shape of a poem. The 25-year-old black man was shot and killed by two white men while he was out for a jog in February in Glynn County, Ga.

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I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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A video taken by an onlooker Monday evening shows a Minneapolis police officer keeping his knee on the neck of a motionless, moaning man at the foot of a squad car. The man, who was later identified as George Floyd, later died.

Tuesday afternoon, Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo announced that four officers involved are now "former employees" with the department, CBS Minnesota reports. Mayor Jacob Frey tweeted, "Four responding MPD officers involved in the death of George Floyd have been terminated. This is the right call."

A police statement said officers were responding to a "forgery in progress." "Officers were advised that the suspect was sitting on top of a blue car and appeared to be under the influence," the statement said. "Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was ordered to step from his car.

"After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance," according to the statement.

The man died soon after, the statement said, adding: "At no time were weapons of any type used by anyone involved in this incident. ... Body worn cameras were on and activated during this incident."

Arradondo said at a press conference Tuesday that the FBI will lead the investigation into the incident due to the possible civil rights violation.

The man who died was identified as George Floyd by Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights and personal injury attorney who said he had been hired by Floyd's family.

"We all watched the horrific death of George Floyd on video as witnesses begged the police officer to take him into the police car and get off his neck," Crump said in a statement. "This abusive, excessive and inhumane use of force cost the life of a man who was being detained by the police for questioning about a non-violent charge."

Two of the officers involved have been "relieved of duty status," Arradondo said. The officers are still receiving pay, but have no law enforcement duties.

The video, captured by Darnella Frazier, begins with the man, who is black, groaning and repeatedly saying "I can't breathe" to the officer who has his knee on the man's neck. The officer is white.

"Please," the man pleads. "I can't breathe," and continues to moan. An officer keeps insisting he get in the car, while the man repeatedly says he can't.

"My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. ... (I need) water or something. Please. Please. I can't breathe, officer. ... I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe." That was followed by more groaning.

A female bystander points out the subject's nose is bleeding.

In an ongoing commentary permeated by cursing, a male onlooker says: "That's bulls**t, Bro. You're stopping his breathing right there, Bro. Get him off the ground, Bro. You're being a bum right now."

The man says the officer is "enjoying that. He's a bum, Bro. You could have put him in the car by now. He's not resisting arrest or nothing. You're enjoying it. Look at you. Your body language - you bum. You know that's bogus right now."

The female onlooker repeatedly urges the officers to check the subject's pulse. "He's not responsive right now," a bystander says. "He's not moving." An ambulance then arrives and takes the man away.

"You just really killed that man, Bro," the male onlooker says to the officer.

Frazier, who took the video, wrote on Facebook: "They killed him right in front of cup foods over south on 38th and Chicago!! No type of sympathy 💔💔#POLICEBRUTALITY."

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the man's death "simply awful," and "wrong at every level" at the press conference Tuesday.

"For the better part of the night I've been trying to find the words to describe what happened and all I keep coming back to is that he should not have died," Frey said.

"What we saw was horrible, completely and utterly messed up," he said. "This man's life matters, he matters. He was someone's son, someone's family member, someone's friend. He was a human being and his life mattered."

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Video shows Minneapolis cop with knee on neck of motionless, moaning man who later died

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A video taken by an onlooker Monday evening shows a Minneapolis police officer keeping his knee on the neck of a motionless, moaning man at the foot of a squad car. The man, who was later identified as George Floyd, later died.