From The New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is The Daily.

Today, as nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd enter a second week,

a conversation with the leader of the city where it all began. Mayor Jacob Fry of Minneapolis.

It's Wednesday, June 3rd.

Hello, this is Jacob Fry. Mr. Mayor, it's Michael Babaro.

Hi, Michael. Thanks for having me. Thank you very much for making time for us because we know

what an urgent time it is in your city and we really appreciate it. You got it.

So just to start, Mayor Fry, I want to go back to the moment when you learned about the death

of George Floyd. And I wonder if you could describe that moment from your perspective. And then

tell me whether in that moment you could have imagined that it would lead us to where we are right now.

When I first heard about the murder of George Floyd, I didn't know all of the facts. I received

the call from our chief saying that there was an interaction with a black man and that black man

had been hospitalized. I didn't know yet whether he had died. I didn't know the nature of the

interaction. And then subsequently, of course, we learned more information. I learned that the

officer involved incident resulted in George Floyd dying. I then saw the video which

was horrid. To see our white police officer press his knee into the neck of a black man who was

unarmed and handcuffed for a period of eight minutes straight. There is nothing more

disgusting that I have ever seen in my life. It was as clear as day to me that the normal

protocols and procedures that are baked into the walls and mortar of city hall that tell you not

to do something, not to speak out, not to say something was wrong because of legal reasons and

all sorts of other issues that you know, you just had to throw those away. And so around 630 in the

morning, as soon as the press was up and available and we had at least collected the preliminary

...