“She said, ‘Why am I seeing another Black man in Minneapolis die the way my brother died?,’” Storms recalled.
Smith was talking about the death of George Floyd, who asphyxiated under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, a scene recorded and playing repeatedly on television that day.
Nearly a year later, Storms, a 2002 Davidson College graduate, is one of the lawyers representing Floyd’s family. He and his co-counsel recently obtained a $27 million settlement on their behalf. Storms is often one of the family’s spokespersons in front of a battery of TV cameras as the prosecution of the Minneapolis officer, Derek Chauvin, unfolds, one of the nation’s highest profile criminal cases in years.
The case, though, also immerses Storms in questions about one of the most recognized successes of his career, which also involved a police officer’s knee and a Black man’s death.
Storms helped represent the family of David Smith, who was mentally ill and died in 2010 after, his lawyers said, being stunned with a TASER device and held facedown at a YMCA for several minutes with an officer’s knee on his back. Minneapolis paid more than $3 million to settle that suit, one of the largest police conduct settlements in the state’s history. The city also pledged to provide more training to officers on how to safely restrain suspects.
“The only thing we were left with,” Angela Smith told CBS Minnesota, “was to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else.”
That’s why she was calling Storms that day last summer. Her family didn’t just exact payment, they forced the city to change how officers are trained and hopefully save lives. Or they thought they had. Now, with Angela Smith on the phone, Storms’ mind raced: Had he failed? Had the city lied? Was police brutality too big for a single lawsuit to rein in?
“Every one of those things occurred to me,” Storms said. “I just couldn’t believe that it would happen in Minneapolis. I thought everyone in the city had to be on notice” after the Smith settlement.
"case" - Google News
April 03, 2021 at 10:01AM
https://ift.tt/3ujKule
Davidson College Alum Represents Floyd Family in High Profile Derek Chauvin Case - Davidson News
"case" - Google News
https://ift.tt/37dicO5
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Davidson College Alum Represents Floyd Family in High Profile Derek Chauvin Case - Davidson News"
Post a Comment