The owner of the Minneapolis store that called police after they said George Floyd used a counterfeit $20 bill there said they will not do so again after Floyd died in police custody in front of the store.
Cup Foods was following state requirements on May 25 when it received the bill, Mahmoud Abumayyaleh posted on Facebook. When a fake bill is detected by a store employee, law enforcement is supposed to be called in an effort to trace the bill's origins. Abumayyaleh said it is likely Floyd did not know the bill was phony.
When the four officers arrived at the scene, they "proceeded to escalate the situation with increased use of violence and force," he said. Abumayyaleh was not at the store at the time, but said his nephew was.
The nephew, he wrote, was "yelling for the police officers to stop, and was pushed away by one of the cops. Sadly, we all know the rest of the story. Despite the fact that George never resisted arrest, police proceeded to end George Floyd’s life over a counterfeit bill."
The store has been in regular contact with Floyd's family and is helping to pay for his memorial service, Abumayyaleh said.
"Police are supposed to protect and serve their communities; instead, what we’ve seen over and over again is the police abusing their power and violating the people’s trust," he said. "We realize now that escalating situations to the police almost always does more harm than good, even for something as harmless as a fake bill. This is not an isolated incident: they have shown time and time again that they do not know how to peacefully handle conflicts in our community."
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