We don’t want other officers to go through what I’ve gone through, but we don’t want other victims to go through what George Floyd went through.

—Cariol Horne was fired from her job as a Buffalo police officer when she forcibly removed and traded blows with a white fellow officer who appeared to be in a rage, punching a handcuffed Black man in the face repeatedly as other officers stood by. The handcuffed man was saying that he couldn't breathe. Instead of being supported for protecting a civilian, within a year, Horne had been reassigned, faced departmental charges, and was fired before she was able to collect her full pension.

After the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, 15 years later, a New York state judge vacated an earlier ruling that had affirmed Cariol Horne's firing, so that she became eligible for back pay and her pension. In a further victory for Ms. Horne, the Buffalo Police Department adopted her duty-to-intervene rule, requiring officers to step in when one of their own uses excessive force, and the Buffalo Common Council voted to approve it under the name Cariol's Law, in her honor.