George Floyd Criminal History

Forty-six-year-old African American George Floyd (14 October, 1973- 25 May, 2020), whose name turned into an ultimate global cry for racial justice, had quite a dark past. There were several records of George Floyd criminal history.  

Shocking, isn’t it? The media have mostly portrayed him as a saint-like figure, and people have cherished him as a hero who has been a victim of police brutality and racism. 

Well, doubtlessly, it is something evident that regardless of his violent criminal history, his death is not justifiable at any point, and this article is not about victim-blaming either. This article is simply about shedding light on facts about his pitch dark past as well as lawbreaking incidents. In this article, you will get to know about George Floyd criminal history in detail.

But before that, we would discuss a little bit about his early life too.

George Floyd

George Perry Floyd Jr., also known as Big Floyd, was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina; he grew up in Houston, Texas. People used to call him gentle-giant. He studied at Yates High School, South Florida State College, and Texas A&M University-Kingsville. During his student life, he earned fame for his talent in football and basketball. He was also a potential hip-hop artist. But, unfortunately, he involved himself in several felonies, and for quite a lot of his lifetime, he was in jail. It’s such a waste that a potential person like him messed his life up with the same mistakes again and again. 

Pistol-Whipping a Pregnant Woman (Assault and Robbery) 

 

In 2005 a woman named Henriques received a knock at her door. She went to the door and found a person claiming himself to work for the water department. She opened the door only to realize that the person was pretending and was not an actual water department employee. I must add that the person was wearing a blue uniform, so the woman did not suspect anything unusual at first.

Soon after realizing the situation, she makes an attempt to slam the door. Suddenly, another five men were coming out of a car, parked outside. Not to mention that Floyd was also one of them. While she was trying her life out to slam the door, those men, including Floyd, brute-forced their way inside of her home.

The woman was in a scary situation. Not to mention in a surprise as well. They soon tried to harm her. It was Floyd himself who took out a gun and pressed it to the woman’s stomach. I must add that the woman was pregnant. She was screaming, begging for her life, but Floyd put her inside of her living room. He also instructed one of his criminal friends that were with him to watch her and to make sure she did not leave the living room. It makes him the ringleader of a violent home invasion offense.

 

The situation was kind of like-

he was playing guard while the other guys ransacked her home looking for drugs and money. They even struck the woman on her head when she was screaming for help. After raiding for a while, they did not find any drugs; they ended up taking money from the woman’s wallet instead. They took her jewelry and cell phone as well. 

Meanwhile, her responsible neighbor observed everything, and sensibly caught the license plate of those people as they pulled off a black Ford Explorer. The neighbor called 911, and fortunately, 911 was able to track down the car. Three months later, the black Ford Explorer got found, and George Floyd was the driver.

After that, cops arrested him in August 2007; he also had a charge of lethal armed robbery in connection with the home invasion. Two years later, he received a sentence of five years in prison for that incident. He was almost 40 years old when they absolved him from Houston prison in January 2013.

If we look closely at this person’s biography and his criminal history, we would soon discover the fact that this assault-robbery case is the most severe crime that Floyd has ever committed in his entire life.

Floyd happens to have a criminal history that is more than a decade old. Apart from this robbery incident, the cops arrested him multiple times (eight to be exact) Between 1997 and 2005; all of those were mostly drug possession and theft offenses. He ended up spending months in jail for all of those charges. 

 Cocaine possession (George Floyd criminal history)

In his 46 years of life, Floyd got miscellaneous baggie charges. To be specific, they found him involved in white bag cases repeatedly.

• The Year 1997 – First-ever Cocaine Offence of Floyd

At the time of 1997-when, he was 23, and police caught him red-handed with cocaine for the first time. He was delivering this recreational drug to another person (the amount was less than one gram). Consequently, the cops arrested him for illegal cocaine possession. He got a sentence of six months of prison.

• 2002 Cocaine offense

In 2002, police arrested him, and he again had to spend eight months in prison as punishment for a cocaine offense. The apprehension by police took place on 19 October of that respective year.

• 2004 Cocaine Felony 

After two years, when it was 2004, history repeated. Police apprehended him once again (6 February), and he had to spend another ten months in prison for that same crime- cocaine offense. 

• 2005 Cocaine Felony

He repeated the same type of felony in the following year, 2005. He received another sentence of ten months in prison for having less than one gram of cocaine on him. This incident happened on 15 December.

 

After the passing of a few months, Floyd’s charge reformed. Modifying the amount of the cocaine to be 4 grams. But the records say that Floyd somehow managed to convince the jury that he had less than 1 gram of cocaine in his possession during the time of apprehension. Thus, the alleged charge lifted eventually. 

 

• Theft/ Burglary with a firearm- The year 1998

 

After his first arrest in 1997 for cocaine possession; the very next year in 1998- he was again arrested by authorities and was charged for lawbreaking. This time it was thievery with a firearm that too on two different occasions; one on 25 September 1998, another on 9 December 1998. He got a total sentence of 10 months and ten days of imprisonment. He served his imprisonment at Harris County jail.

Other Offences and criminal records of George Floyd 

• Failure to identify himself to a cop-Year 2001 

In 2001, Floyd failed to provide his name, address, birth date, etc., personal information to a police officer. As a result, he got himself arrested by the police and later got sentenced to 15 days of imprisonment. 

To be more specific, Floyd supposedly did not cooperate with the police officer. He refused to spill/ hand out his date of birth, name, address, etc. Whereabouts of him to an officer arresting him for grounds that are unknown (unfortunately, there are no court records about why the police were questioning him all along). However, according to the court documents- it was a simple “failure to identification to a police officer” type of case. Many assume that Floyd did it because he was a fugitive.

• Trespassing-Year 2003

He was once arrested for criminal trespassing on private property and got sentenced to 30 days of jail because of the offense- it was on 3 January, 2003. 

• A passenger of an Unlicensed Vehicle- The year 2019

In 2019, Floyd got found as a passenger in an unlicensed vehicle stopped by police. He got ordered by the cops to put his hands on the dash several times, but he did not listen to them. After some seconds, when the police were getting angry, the car driver put his hands over his head. The police officers then pulled both the driver and George Floyd out of the car and handcuffed them.

• Miscellaneous 

According to the officials- other than these, Floyd had another two convictions in the 1990s. One for robbery and another for delivery of an authorized substance (cocaine). However, there is no clear information if Floyd had served his punishment any time for either of those misdemeanors. 

• Using Counterfeit Money- The year 2020

In Minneapolis’s neighborhood on the 25 May of 2020, Floyd got arrested for passing a $20 bill at a departmental grocery store, which happened to be counterfeit money.

He was acting weird and noticeably unusual since he was under the impact of Methamphetamine and Fentanyl (both are recreational drugs often mixed with cocaine and heroin) at that particular time. As a result, the store clerk found him suspicious and immediately reported him to the police.

Here starts the real story of how so many people, regardless of the racial difference, came together to protest over a pattern of police brutality and centuries of inequality. On this very day- 25 May 2020, Floyd got brutally killed by a police officer named Derek Chauvin in broad daylight. 

 

Soon after receiving the phone call when police officers arrived at the scene, Thomas Lane and J. A Kueng (Cop) got told that the customer (George Floyd) was sitting in a nearby car with two other people (one man and one woman). One cop pulled out his gun and pointed at the open window of the vehicle- directing him to show his hands.

The police ordered Floyd to leave the car. He got handcuffed when the cop pulled him out of the vehicle. According to the police Floyd actively resisted them and asked why he got arrested. Police told in reply that it was for passing counterfeit currency. 

The police pinned him down on the ground when he was resisting. Later the cop Derek Chauvin pressed against Floyd’s neck with his knee for 9 minutes, which caused Floyd extreme breathing difficulty. To the very last moments of his life, he was crying for mercy, saying, ” I can’t breathe….. I can’t breathe!” Heartbreaking indeed, isn’t it? If we look at his continuous lawbreaking attitude, he was no saint, but he did not deserve to die like this.

The very last crime of his life George Floyd criminal history-

using counterfeit money cost him his life. According to the autopsy report, Floyd died due to the occurrence of cardiopulmonary arrest. I must add that neck compression was one of the principal factors of death in that respective autopsy report. 

At this point in the article, I would like to repeat that these records of George Floyd criminal history should not and do not argue his death at any angle.

Why, you ask? Because having a criminal past in America does not justify a brutal careless murder done by police when that person even served his time and was trying his best to turn his life around after being released from Texas prison. 

According to his friends, family, and co-workers from his workplace, he was a changed man who was willing and determined to work hard to provide for his five children and start a new fresh life. He became a mentor for young people of his community, served in the church, helped his mother exercise, and worked as a truck driver, bouncer, and security guard. However, he lost his job as a bouncer because of coronavirus. 

Because he had once been a star-like high-school athlete who was a talented player of sports like basketball and football, this new start indeed turned into a tragedy for him. Floyd was a famous, expert sportsman and a part of Houston’s legendary hip-hop community. He has had records under the name Big Floyd and has made cameos on multiple DJ screw mixtapes. Though George had great potential in that sector, unfortunately, he failed to find Houston’s real opportunities. There are several records of George Floyd criminal history in his later life. It’s such a waste that he had great potential yet involved himself in the crime world.

We hope this article gave you enough information about George Floyd criminal history.