Good evening. I'm John Yang. It was five years ago today that George Floyd was killed by

Minneapolis police. Cell phone video of the event, captured by a young witness, sent shockwaves

around the world and triggered an American reckoning with racial justice and police use of force.

Today, vigils were held in cities across America to mark the day. In Minneapolis,

at the intersection where Floyd died, crowds placed flowers on his memorial. But despite the

protests and the focus on race and racial inequality that followed Floyd's death, a recent Pew

research poll found that 72 percent of American surveyed said it did not lead to changes

that improved black people's lives. Earlier, I spoke with Selwyn Jones, who's George Floyd's uncle.

He's co-founder of the Justice 929 Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes civil rights and systemic

change. Our conversation is part of our ongoing

series, Race Matters. I imagine this time of years got to be difficult for you and your family.

What are you thinking about? What do you think about when this anniversary comes rolling around?

The impact that it made upon the world. COVID came. COVID had everybody where we needed to have them. That's indoors,

looking at television, needing to be informed. And boy, didn't they get informed about a lot of

things. They got informed about racism, hatred, police brutality, systemic racism, power control, that all came out that day.

You know, afterward, there was a sort of a flurry of changes. Police departments were banning

chokeholds, they were requiring body cams, requiring training on de-escalating confrontations,

and yet killings by police officers have gone up since then. What do you make of that?

I think the mental health that goes along with being a police officer has to be stressful.

So we need more patience. You know, obviously we need more mental health evaluations,

but we literally need something to flip this script because you're right.

There's been more people deceased five years after than five years before George.

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