Bystander Videos of George Floyd and Others Are Policing the Police

The Minneapolis police statement was short and sanitized. An allegation of forgery. A suspect who “appeared to be under the influence,” who “physically resisted officers” and who appeared to be “suffering medical distress.”

The video that emerged hours later told a drastically different story. It showed a white police officer pressing his knee into the neck of a black suspect until he appeared limp and unconscious. Throughout the encounter, the man, George Floyd, could be heard saying “I can’t breathe” again and again. He later died at a hospital.

The explosive footage of Mr. Floyd, 46, taken by a bystander and shared widely on social media early Tuesday, incited community outrage, an F.B.I. civil rights investigation and the firing of the police officer and three colleagues who were also at the scene. “Every bit of what I saw was wrong,” Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, said in an emotional interview with reporters on Facebook Live shortly after announcing that the officers had been fired. “It was malicious. And it was unacceptable. There is no gray there.”