George Floyd Arrest Records Search | Police & Court
Historical record research · Harris County, Houston and Minneapolis
George Floyd Arrest Records: Separate the Texas Cases From the 2020 Minneapolis Arrest
Searches for George Floyd arrest records often mix two very different record sets: older criminal cases involving George Perry Floyd in Harris County, Texas, and the May 25, 2020 Minneapolis arrest in which Floyd died and later became the victim named in criminal prosecutions of police officers.
This guide shows how to verify each record using the government agency that maintains it, how to distinguish an arrest from a conviction, and where widely repeated online claims need additional caution.
GEORGE FLOYD RECORD ROUTER
2 JURISDICTIONS
HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS
HENNEPIN / MINNEAPOLIS
SOURCE VERIFIED
ARREST ≠ CHARGE ≠ CONVICTION
Context matters: George Floyd’s earlier Texas criminal history and the legality of police conduct on May 25, 2020 are separate legal questions. The later Minnesota prosecutions concerned the conduct of the officers. Federal and state courts convicted officers for crimes arising from Floyd’s death.
Primary Texas source
Harris County District Clerk criminal records.
Houston police source
HPD arrest and offense-report requests.
Minnesota court source
MCRO plus Hennepin County court records.
2020 officer case
State v. Derek Chauvin, 27-CR-20-12646.
Identity
George Perry Floyd Jr., born October 14, 1973.
Which George Floyd record are you actually trying to find?
TEXAS COURT
Older Houston criminal cases
Use Harris County District Clerk records for charges, cause numbers, judgments and dispositions.
This is the primary record track for Floyd’s own older criminal cases.
HOUSTON POLICE
Police arrest or offense report
Use HPD Open Records for Houston Police arrest records and incident information.
A police report is different from the court judgment.
MINNEAPOLIS POLICE
May 25, 2020 arrest record
Request adult arrest or public police data directly from Minneapolis Police.
This record concerns Floyd’s final arrest, not a later criminal prosecution of him.
MINNESOTA COURT
Officer prosecutions
Use Minnesota Judicial Branch records for Chauvin, Kueng, Lane and Thao cases.
Floyd is the victim in these prosecutions.
BACKGROUND RECORD
State criminal-history system
Use Texas DPS or Minnesota BCA only for the information those systems legally make public.
Neither replaces the underlying court file.What the documented record supports—and what should still be verified
The detailed Harris County search requires interaction with the District Clerk’s record system, including account login and verification controls. The summary below uses court-record-based reporting as a roadmap, but researchers should open the actual Harris County case and judgment before republishing an individual allegation.
| Period | What reliable record-based reporting establishes | Primary verification source | Important caution |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 onward | Harris County court-record reporting describes multiple criminal cases involving drug, theft and trespass allegations or convictions during the late 1990s and 2000s. | Harris County District Clerk | Do not copy a social-media list without checking each cause and disposition. |
| 2004 | A Houston drug case resulted in a guilty plea and a 10-month state-jail sentence according to court-record-based reporting. | Harris County District Clerk + HPD | The arrest later received additional scrutiny because of the arresting officer’s subsequent misconduct investigations. |
| 2007–2009 | Floyd was arrested on an aggravated-robbery-with-a-deadly-weapon case, pleaded guilty in 2009 and received a five-year prison sentence. | Harris County District Clerk | Use the indictment and judgment for the legally precise charge and disposition. |
| January 2013 | Record-based reporting places Floyd’s release on parole after the robbery sentence in January 2013. | Texas correctional / court history | A historical correctional record is not the same thing as a current inmate lookup. |
| May 25, 2020 | Minneapolis officers arrested Floyd after responding to a report involving an allegedly counterfeit $20 bill. Floyd died while restrained in police custody. | Minneapolis Police + Minnesota court + DOJ | The later Chauvin prosecution is not a criminal case against Floyd. |
Fact-checkers reviewing Harris County records have specifically warned that some viral lists exaggerated Floyd’s criminal history by adding offenses he was not charged with or by converting allegations into convictions. The most reliable approach is case-by-case verification.
Search George Perry Floyd in Harris County court records
Harris County District Clerk states that public criminal case information remains available free of charge after users register and log in.
Open Harris County District Clerk Search Our Records
Open official Harris County records
Create or sign into the free account
The Clerk currently requires login before public criminal case information can be viewed.
Choose Criminal → Party Inquiry
Do not use only a generic web search.
Search “Floyd, George Perry”
Add the date of birth—October 14, 1973—when the system allows it.
Review every returned public criminal cause
Search results can include court costs, case details, parties, documents and file location.
Write down each cause number
The cause number is the best way to keep different arrests and cases separate.
Open the charging instrument
Record the exact offense as filed in court.
Find the judgment or disposition
Do not treat the original charge as the final outcome.
Check sentence information
Record jail, state-jail, prison or supervision terms exactly as entered.
Order a certificate when formal proof is needed
Harris County Criminal Customer Service currently publishes a $6 fee for a certificate of record search.
Harris County District Clerk – Criminal Customer Service
1201 Franklin Street, 3rd Floor, Suite 3254
Houston, TX 77002
Phone: 832-927-5900
General hours: Monday–Friday, 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
1201 Franklin Street, 3rd Floor, Suite 3254
Houston, TX 77002
Phone: 832-927-5900
General hours: Monday–Friday, 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Decode the Harris County result before writing a timeline
| Field | What it establishes | Common mistake | Best document |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arrest date | Date connected to detention or arrest processing. | Calling it the conviction date. | Police/jail arrest record. |
| Original charge | Initial allegation. | Reporting it as the final offense of conviction. | Complaint/indictment. |
| Indictment | Formal felony charging instrument. | Assuming indictment means guilt. | Grand-jury indictment. |
| Plea | How the defendant answered or resolved the charge. | Using a news summary instead of the plea/judgment record. | Judgment or plea papers. |
| Conviction | Final adjudicated criminal outcome. | Counting dismissed charges as convictions. | Judgment. |
| Sentence | Punishment imposed by court. | Equating imposed sentence with exact calendar time physically incarcerated. | Judgment + correctional history. |
Request a George Floyd Houston arrest or offense report
Houston Police specifically provides a process for requesting an HPD jail arrest record. HPD asks for the arrest date and identifying information and recommends including the offense-report number or offense type when known.
Open HPD Public Information Requests
Open HPD Open Records instructions
Choose the arrest-record / jail-arrest-record procedure
Do not request a full “criminal history” from HPD; HPD states it no longer provides criminal-history searches.
Provide George Perry Floyd’s full name
Add DOB October 14, 1973.
Provide the specific arrest date
Use the Harris County docket to identify the correct event.
Add the offense report number when available
This greatly reduces the chance of retrieving the wrong event.
For the public portion of an offense report, say so explicitly
HPD explains that the ordinary public section can contain date, time, location, responding officers and an incident summary.
Provide a postal mailing address
HPD’s current Open Records guidance states responsive records are not ordinarily emailed or faxed through this process.
Houston Police Department Open Records Unit
Edward A. Thomas Building
1200 Travis Street, 10th Floor
Houston, TX 77002
Open Records: 713-308-9178
Email: HPD.OpenRecords@houstontx.gov
Edward A. Thomas Building
1200 Travis Street, 10th Floor
Houston, TX 77002
Open Records: 713-308-9178
Email: HPD.OpenRecords@houstontx.gov
HPD says ordinary open-record requests typically are not same-day service. A public-release report may be available faster in person when the requester has the incident number or enough information to locate it.
The 2004 Houston drug conviction and why it later received scrutiny
What the court-record history says
Court-record-based Houston reporting states that Floyd was arrested in February 2004 in a drug case, later pleaded guilty and received a 10-month state-jail sentence.
Why researchers should add context
The arresting Houston officer, Gerald Goines, was later implicated in major misconduct investigations involving other cases. Harris County prosecutors subsequently reviewed cases connected to his police work.
The later scrutiny does not by itself legally erase Floyd’s 2004 judgment. Researchers should distinguish between questions about the reliability of an officer’s police work, the existence of the conviction, and whether a conviction was later pardoned or vacated.
Best verification sequence
Locate the 2004 Harris County cause
Search George Perry Floyd with DOB October 14, 1973.
Open the judgment
Confirm the actual offense of conviction and sentence.
Request the HPD arrest/offense record
Use the case date and police-report number from the court file.
Check for later post-judgment orders
A conviction should not be described as vacated or pardoned unless an official order says so.
Separate pardon proceedings from the original criminal case
The clemency process does not automatically rewrite the old judgment.
The 2004 conviction was not ultimately pardoned
Board initially recommended a posthumous pardon
A clemency application sought a pardon relating to Floyd’s 2004 Houston drug conviction.
The recommendation was withdrawn
The Office of the Texas Governor stated that the Board of Pardons and Paroles withdrew the recommendation because a group of recommendations contained procedural errors and lacked compliance with Board rules. The governor therefore did not consider Floyd’s recommendation.
The Board later denied the application
Public reporting based on the Board’s notice states that the posthumous pardon request was unanimously denied.
Result: Do not write that George Floyd was posthumously pardoned for the 2004 conviction. The initial recommendation was withdrawn, and the later application was denied.
Verify the 2007 aggravated-robbery case through the judgment
Court-record-based reporting from Houston and the Associated Press consistently describes Floyd’s final major Texas prosecution as an aggravated-robbery-with-a-deadly-weapon case arising from a 2007 arrest. He pleaded guilty in 2009 and received a five-year prison sentence.
Descriptions of the underlying incident vary in secondary articles, and some older articles were corrected. For precise allegations, use the indictment, plea papers and judgment rather than repeating a viral summary.
Search Harris County District Clerk
Filter for George Perry Floyd and the 2007–2009 period.
Record the cause number
This prevents confusion with Floyd’s earlier drug and theft cases.
Open the indictment
Use the indictment for the formal allegation.
Open the judgment
Use the judgment for the plea, conviction and sentence.
Use correctional history only for custody dates
A court’s five-year sentence and the calendar period spent incarcerated or on parole are related but not identical data points.
Request the Minneapolis arrest record separately from the Texas history
Minneapolis Police Department maintains adult arrest records and allows public requests. The City’s current instructions say an adult arrest-record request requires the arrested person’s full name and date of birth.
Open Minneapolis Police Arrest Records
Open official MPD arrest-record request
Use George Perry Floyd Jr.
Date of birth: October 14, 1973.
Request the May 25, 2020 arrest event
Specify the date to distinguish it from unrelated people with similar names.
Request the public police report separately if needed
Minneapolis public-information police reports can include date, time, address, nature of incident, adult persons involved and a brief description.
Use body-camera procedures for video
Ordinary arrest-record requests and police video requests follow different data processes.
Do not expect a court disposition against Floyd from this event
The May 25 encounter ended with Floyd’s death. The resulting criminal prosecutions were brought against officers.
Minneapolis Police Records Information Unit
Public Service Building
505 Fourth Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Phone: 612-673-2961
Monday–Thursday: 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Friday: 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Public Service Building
505 Fourth Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Phone: 612-673-2961
Monday–Thursday: 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Friday: 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
State v. Derek Chauvin is not a George Floyd criminal-history case
Case number 27-CR-20-12646 prosecuted Derek Chauvin. George Floyd was the person whose death formed the basis of the prosecution.
Minnesota state case
The official Minnesota Judicial Branch high-profile case page identifies State of Minnesota v. Derek Chauvin, case 27-CR-20-12646, filed in Hennepin County District Court on May 29, 2020.
The jury returned guilty verdicts on April 20, 2021.
Federal civil-rights cases
The U.S. Department of Justice later secured federal convictions involving all four former Minneapolis officers for violations of George Floyd’s constitutional rights.
Floyd’s earlier Texas convictions were not a defense verdict or legal justification for the force used against him in Minneapolis. The officer prosecutions were adjudicated based on the officers’ conduct and applicable criminal and constitutional law.
Search Minnesota court records without confusing name matches
Open MCRO Case Search
Open Minnesota Court Records Online
Accept the current MCRO terms
Minnesota labels MCRO information as unofficial court-case records.
Choose Name or Case Number
For a known high-profile case, case number is safer.
Filter Hennepin County
This reduces unrelated statewide matches.
Use DOB when researching a person
Name searches can return unrelated people.
Read the Register of Actions
The case type itself does not tell you the final result.
Use Hennepin Records Center for official copies
MCRO itself is not a certified court record.
MCRO expressly warns that it should not be used as a substitute for a fingerprint-linked criminal background check and that name searches can be unreliable.
Hennepin County District Court Records Center
Hennepin County Government Center
300 South Sixth Street
Minneapolis, MN 55487
Phone: 612-348-6000
Public access: Monday–Friday, 8:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Hennepin County Government Center
300 South Sixth Street
Minneapolis, MN 55487
Phone: 612-348-6000
Public access: Monday–Friday, 8:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Hennepin County currently lists a $14 fee for a certified copy of a court document. Plain copies can be available through courthouse public-access services.
A public Minnesota criminal-history search is not a complete arrest list
Public BCA information can include
- Public qualifying convictions.
- Offense.
- Offense date.
- Court of conviction.
- Conviction date.
- Sentence.
- Probation agency or place of confinement.
Ordinary public BCA history does not include
- Arrest information.
- Court cases that did not result in conviction.
- Juvenile criminal-history information.
- Convictions outside the public-retention period.
Minnesota BCA currently states that public conviction information remains public for 15 years following completion of the sentence.
Use identity fields before attributing a case to George Floyd
Full name: George Perry Floyd Jr.
Date of birth: October 14, 1973
Case occurred in the correct jurisdiction
Case date fits the known timeline
Court file contains matching identifiers
Police and court case numbers correspond
Final disposition is read separately
Secondary report points to an actual court record
Do not attribute a modern court case to George Floyd merely because the defendant’s surname is Floyd or the first name is George. He died on May 25, 2020, so later criminal cases with a living defendant are necessarily a different person.
Six reasons an online George Floyd arrest list can be incomplete or wrong
Arrest and conviction were counted as separate “crimes”
They may describe different stages of the same case.
An original charge was later reduced
The arrest offense may differ from the conviction offense.
A dismissed allegation was reported as a conviction
Always read the final disposition.
A same-name defendant was added
Name-only aggregation is unreliable.
Texas and Minnesota records were merged
Harris County cases and the 2020 Minneapolis incident should be researched separately.
Officer prosecutions were described as Floyd’s cases
Chauvin, Kueng, Lane and Thao were defendants in cases arising from Floyd’s death.
George Floyd arrest and court-record timeline
George Perry Floyd Jr. born
Born October 14, 1973. This date of birth is an essential identity field when separating him from same-name defendants.
First Harris County arrest identified in record-based reporting
Houston reporting reviewing court files places the beginning of Floyd’s documented Harris County criminal record in 1997.
Additional Houston criminal cases
Court-record-based reporting describes theft, drug and trespass cases during this period. Individual charges and dispositions should be verified through the District Clerk.
Drug case resulting in state-jail sentence
Floyd pleaded guilty in the Houston case and received a 10-month state-jail sentence according to court-record-based reporting.
Aggravated-robbery arrest
Floyd was arrested in connection with an aggravated-robbery-with-a-deadly-weapon prosecution in Harris County.
Guilty plea and five-year sentence
The robbery case ended in a guilty plea and a five-year prison sentence.
Release on parole
Record-based reporting places his parole release in January 2013.
May 25 Minneapolis arrest and death
Minneapolis police encountered Floyd after responding to a report involving an allegedly counterfeit $20 bill. Floyd died while restrained in police custody.
Derek Chauvin convicted in Minnesota state court
A Hennepin County jury convicted Chauvin on all counts in State v. Chauvin.
Federal civil-rights accountability
Chauvin pleaded guilty in federal court, and the other three former officers were convicted of federal civil-rights offenses arising from Floyd’s death.
Posthumous Texas pardon request denied
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied the application involving Floyd’s 2004 Houston drug conviction after the earlier recommendation had been withdrawn.
Use this order when claims about George Floyd’s record conflict
1. Court judgment
Best source for conviction, plea, sentence and formal disposition.
2. Charging document
Best source for what prosecutors formally alleged.
3. Police arrest report
Best source for the arresting agency’s account of the incident.
4. Correctional record
Best source for custody, prison and release information.
5. Government press release
Useful for later prosecutions, court outcomes and official explanations.
6. Established reporting
Useful for contextualizing records that cannot be fully searched without interactive access.
7. Fact-checking
Useful for identifying exaggerated or miscaptioned viral claims.
8. Social media
Use only as a lead. Never treat a screenshot or meme as the underlying record.
Avoid “criminal record math.” Nine criminal cases do not necessarily equal nine convictions, and nine docket entries do not necessarily equal nine separate arrests. Count only what the underlying records actually establish.
Texas and Minnesota contacts for deeper record research
Harris County District Clerk – Criminal
1201 Franklin Street
Suite 3254
Houston, TX 77002
Suite 3254
Houston, TX 77002
Harris County District Clerk Records Center
5900 Canal Street
Houston, TX 77011
Houston, TX 77011
Houston Police Open Records
1200 Travis Street
Houston, TX 77002
Houston, TX 77002
Hennepin Court Records Center
300 South Sixth Street
Minneapolis, MN 55487
Minneapolis, MN 55487
Minneapolis Police Records
505 Fourth Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Minnesota BCA
1430 Maryland Avenue East
St. Paul, MN 55106
St. Paul, MN 55106
Harris County Criminal Justice Center map
Hennepin County Government Center map
George Floyd arrest-record and court-search questions answered
How can I search George Floyd arrest records?
Use Harris County District Clerk for George Perry Floyd’s older Houston court cases, HPD for Houston police arrest records, Minneapolis Police for the May 25, 2020 arrest record, and Minnesota courts for later officer prosecutions.
Where are George Floyd’s Texas court records?
Most publicly documented cases are in Harris County. The Harris County District Clerk provides free public criminal case information after account login.
What does the Harris County record show?
Record-based reporting documents multiple cases from the late 1990s through the 2000s involving drug, theft and trespass matters, plus the 2004 drug conviction and the later aggravated-robbery case. Each case should be individually verified.
What happened in the 2004 drug case?
Floyd pleaded guilty and received a 10-month state-jail sentence according to court-record reporting. The case later received renewed scrutiny because of investigations involving the arresting Houston officer.
Was George Floyd convicted of aggravated robbery?
Yes. Reliable court-record-based reporting states that he pleaded guilty in 2009 to the Harris County aggravated-robbery-with-a-deadly-weapon case and received a five-year prison sentence.
How do I request the May 25, 2020 Minneapolis arrest record?
Use the Minneapolis Police Department adult arrest-record request system and supply George Perry Floyd’s full name, date of birth and the May 25, 2020 date.
Is State v. Derek Chauvin part of Floyd’s criminal record?
No. Chauvin was the defendant and Floyd was the victim. The official Minnesota state case number is 27-CR-20-12646.
How do I search Minnesota court records?
Use Minnesota Court Records Online and filter to Hennepin County, or use the Minnesota Judicial Branch’s dedicated State v. Chauvin page for the high-profile case documents.
Will Minnesota BCA show every arrest?
No. BCA’s ordinary public criminal-history information does not include arrest information or cases that did not result in conviction.
Why do George Floyd criminal-history lists online disagree?
Some combine arrests, charges and convictions, others count amended charges twice, and some viral posts have included offenses that court-record fact-checking found were not actually charged. Verify the court judgment before repeating a claim.
