Biden says he had a conversation with George Floyd’s family

Former Vice President Joe Biden (D) revealed in an address to supporters on Friday that he spoke with the family of George Floyd, the Minneapolis African American man killed during a police arrest.

The former vice president referred to them as a “close, decent, honorable family.”

“We need justice for George Floyd,” Biden said in the live-streamed address Friday. 

“We need real police reform, to hold cops to a higher standard that so many of them actually meet, that holds bad cops accountable and repairs relationships between law enforcement and the community they’re sworn to protect,” he said.

Floyd, 46, died earlier this week in the Minnesota city after a police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes during an arrest. Floyd can be heard saying “I can’t breathe” in a video of the incident. 

“Once again, the words ‘I can’t breathe.’ An act of brutality so elemental, it did more than deny one more black man in America his civil rights and his human rights. It denied his very humanity. It denied him of his life,” Biden said. 

Protests over Floyd’s death rocked Minneapolis and the nation for the third day in a row on Thursday. 

Demonstrators burned a police precinct to the ground Thursday as thousands marched through Minneapolis calling for the officers involved in Floyd’s death to be charged with murder.

On Friday, local authorities announced that Derek Chauvin, the officer that can be seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck in the footage captured, was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. 

Trump slammed the unrest in a tweet on Friday morning.