George Floyd's family will receive $ 27 million in landmark settlement with the city of Minneapolis

Bridgett Floyd, George's sister, gives a press conference on March 8 in Minneapolis.CRAIG LASSIG / EFE

The City Council of Minneapolis (Minnesota) has agreed to pay $ 27 million to George Floyd's family, so that they withdraw the lawsuit filed for his death last year at the hands of the city police.

As the family's lawyer, Ben Crump, said in a statement, this is the largest preliminary ruling settlement that has ever been closed in a civil rights case.

This, according to Crump, "sends a powerful message that black lives matter and that police brutality against black people must end."

The announcement of the agreement comes as the process of selecting the jury members for the murder trial against former police officer Derek Chauvin has been held in the city for four days.

The ex-agent suffocated Floyd by pressing his neck with his knee for more than eight minutes, as he picked up the video that went around the world and detonated a massive mobilization across the country for racial justice last summer.

In parallel to the criminal proceedings, Floyd's family filed a lawsuit in July against the City Council, and against Chauvin and the other three officers, already fired from the Minneapolis police, who participated in his arrest.

The family alleged that the officers violated Floyd's rights by reducing him, and that the local administration tolerated a culture of violence, racism and impunity being imposed on the police.

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The $ 27 million, an amount approved unanimously in the municipal plenary session, includes $ 500,000 that will go to the neighborhood where Floyd was arrested.

"No amount of money can ever compensate for the intense pain and trauma caused by his death to the family or the people of our city," said the president of the corporation, Lisa Bender.

"I want, on my behalf and that of the entire municipal corporation, to offer my deepest condolences to George Floyd's family, his friends and our entire community who mourns his loss."

The publicity of the agreement has opened the legal debate on its implications in the trial against Chauvin that has just started, and there are those who defend that it could lead to its annulment.

The lawyer for the ex-policeman, at the beginning of the jury selection sessions this week, tried to get any mention of a possible preliminary ruling in the civil case blocked, as he believes that it could harm his client.