WCCB Charlotte s CW
May 25, 2021
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – One year after his death, George Floyd is being remembered in Charlotte and around the world, as activists continue to demand racial justice and an end to police brutality.
Floyd’s death, after former police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes, sparked weeks of protests.
“His death changed the scope of policing. It really did,” says Charlotte NAACP President Corine Mack.
Mack says Floyd’s death opened eyes.
“Because people began to see that when Black people complain about how we’re treated by police officers and law enforcement across the country, that this was not just some fear that had no substance. It was factual,” Mack says.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings reflects on his first year on the job – one marked by demands for change in police departments nationwide. We'll take a look at where those efforts stand.
N.C. Promised Police Reform a Year Ago. Did It Happen?
The death of George Floyd inspired communities across North Carolina to commit themselves to reforming policing practices. A year later, some cities have made more progress towards those goals than others.
May 26, 2021 • (TNS) The murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee to Floyd s neck for over nine minutes May 25, 2020, accelerated local police reforms in many communities across North Carolina.
In June, leaders in Raleigh, Durham and other cities announced they had banned chokeholds and had adopted or would soon adopt all the measures in the national 8 Can t Wait police reform campaign.
WFAE There was gasoline at this ExxonMobil station in south Charlotte but also a long line of cars waiting for it.
If you ve been slacking on social etiquette over a year of social distancing, now’s a good time to brush up. In the biggest step back toward “normal” since the coronavirus pandemic began, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week that fully vaccinated Americans can ditch their face masks in most situations.
It didn’t take long for North Carolina to embrace the new guidelines. On Friday, Gov. Roy Cooper lifted the state’s indoor mask mandate for most situations and fully eased capacity limits on businesses. The move came as more than half of North Carolina’s residents have gotten at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine and after 14 months of a pandemic that’s claimed more than 12,800 lives in the state.
/ Over the last decade, CMPD is making far fewer arrests and writing far fewer citations. The decline has continued during the pandemic.
In the last decade, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police have made a quiet and dramatic change: Officers are making far fewer arrests and writing far fewer citations.
In 2009, in Rodney Monroe’s second year as chief, CMPD made 32,081 arrests, according to records provided to WFAE.
That number has ticked downward each year, reaching 16,401 people in 2018. After increasing slightly in 2019, the number of arrests plummeted again in 2020 during the pandemic, to 14,535.
And for the first quarter of 2021, arrests were down nearly 30% compared to the same period a year ago.