MEDIA ADVISORY

Collette Flanagan- collette@mapbdallas.com

Sara Mokuria-saramokuria@gmail.com, (214)454-3980 John Fullinwider- Jhfullinwider@gmail.com, (214) 683-2493

Mothers Against Police Brutality thanks the jurors for their verdict of guilty in the case of Derek Chauvin. But a guilty verdict in this case cannot return George Floyd to his family. It cannotreturn Minneapolis to the time before May 25 of last year. It cannot return this country to a time when police brutality is thought to be the actions “a few bad apples” on any given police force.

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“Police brutality is a routine part of policing. The use of deadly force takes the lives of a

thousand people a year in America,” said Collette Flanagan, who founded MAPB in 2013 after he Dallas police killed her son, Clinton Allen, a 25-year-old unarmed Black man, a father of twin sons.

“It happens literally every day. It’s a national crisis that demands a national response.”

“The reforms that police departments adopted in the wake of the murder of George may help, but they don’t reach the deep current of racism and brutality that runs through our police departments,” said John Fullinwider, a co-founder of MAPB.

“There is a Derek Chauvin on every police force in the U.S. – more than one.”

“The system of policing itself must change,” said Sara Mokuria, also a co-founder, whose own father was killed by police when she was a child. “Armed force is not the solution to community harm.

We simply must reduce, immediately, the number of encounters between police officers and the public. Let’s stop investing in police and start investing, at last, in the longstanding unmet community needs that undermine the lives of so many people across this country.”