WASHINGTON – As she watched the Derek Chauvin murder trial, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was struck by the teenage girl who took the viral video of the Minneapolis Police officer as he knelt on George Floyd for nearly nine minutes in what Pelosi called a "public assassination."
Darnella Frazier, 18, testified March 30 that she remains haunted by the tragedy, staying up some nights "apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life."
Pelosi, D-Calif., said it hit a nerve.
"I feel sad about the spectators, and that that young woman who said she's up all night because she wonders what she could have done differently," Pelosi said. "I think if any of us was there, we would have gone up and just pulled him off him. But we might have gotten shot, and that's probably why somebody didn't pull him off."
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staff video, USA TODAY
Pelosi reflected on the Chauvin trial in a wide-ranging interview with USA TODAY at her Capitol Hill office Tuesday. The killing of Floyd, which sparked nationwide Black Lives Matter protests last summer, prompted the House to pass a police reform bill that bears Floyd's name.
Though she has not watched a lot of the trial, Pelosi said she has followed news accounts and kept abreast of developments. The testimony has made her angry as well as sad as she identified with the anguish and a feeling of helplessness she said bystanders must have felt as Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck in May.
While she said she has deep respect for law enforcement, Pelosi said "that isn't a license to kill. And that's what happened. That was a public assassination of George Floyd."
The speaker told USA TODAY that she continues to hold law enforcement generally in high regard despite calls from some in her party to "defund the police," a rallying cry she has frequently – including again Tuesday – swatted down.
"Forget that. That has no place," she said. "Safety is essential to everyone's lives. But I find the (Chauvin) trial so disappointing. And maybe my disappointment springs from my expectation that these are our protectors."
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The death of Floyd and other Black Americans killed at the hands of police has drawn attention to the conduct of law enforcement and altered public attitudes toward law enforcement. But Pelosi said "by and large," the men and women who wear a badge carry out their duties honorably.
"I was raised in a family where, be true to the men in blue – police and fire. They save our lives. They risk their lives. They leave home. They don't know if they're coming home. Their families make sacrifices for our safety," she said. "So I have a respect for that as I do for our people here."
Pelosi weighed in on the trial on the same day she spoke at a ceremony honoring U.S. Capitol Police Officer William F. "Billy" Evans, who was killed April 2 after a 25-year-old man rammed his vehicle into a barricade shielding the Capitol's north side.
In her address with the Evans family in attendance, Pelosi called the 18-year member of the force "a martyr for our democracy."
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would bolster police accountability, make it easier to prosecute law enforcement officers for misconduct and create a national registry to track officers who try to move from one department to another.
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The bill has stalled in the Senate where Republicans have criticized several aspects of the bill, including a provision eliminating some legal immunity for officers designed to shield them from unwarranted complaints.
Pelosi said the bill would improve training of police to ease confrontations. She mentioned the death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man shot by a police officer in a Minneapolis suburb during a Sunday traffic stop.
"How could it be that violence of that kind is such an early resort for some of these police officers?" she said. "There just has to be some better training."
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