I'm Jean Demby.

I'm Shereen Marisol Maraji and this is Code Switch.

From NPR.

Today on the podcast, we're trying to answer a question.

How did a police killing in Minneapolis, Minnesota lead people thousands of miles away in

across the ocean to pull down a statue of a slave trader who's been dead for nearly three

centuries?

That's what happened in early June.

In the English port city of Bristol, you might have seen the videos.

Two weeks after George Floyd's killing, protesters there toppled the statue of a man named Edward

Colston.

The crowd of protesters cheered.

A few pushed and pulled and rolled the now spray painted statue toward the harbor.

And then...

That's a reminder of how much influence events here in the US have overseas.

And how some other countries are grappling with the same issues we are.

Over the past couple of months, NPR's lending correspondent Frank Langfit and producer Sophie

E. Stah, have been talking to people in Bristol to try and answer the question we posed

at the very beginning of this episode.

They also looked at the relationship police have with black people in Britain and why

British cops have handled anti-racist protests much more peacefully than cops have in the

US.

...