Civil rights attorney Ben Crump has become the most high-profile go-to lawyer for families who have lost a loved one to police misconduct and brutality. His most prominent clients are the family members of George Floyd, who was killed in police custody one year ago in Minneapolis.

In March, Minneapolis agreed to pay $27 million to settle a civil lawsuit from Floyd’s family. The size of the settlement, Crump said, is what counts here.

“It was significant because it represented the most that was ever paid out by a city police department in a pre-trial police brutality death case of a Black person,” Crump told Yahoo Finance. “One of the things that I have tried to do, even if sometimes single handedly, as I fight in cities and states all across America, is to raise the value of Black life,” he said.

Crump said he plans to continue to seek multimillion-dollar settlements on behalf of clients who have been unjustifiably killed by police. “My goal is to make it financially unsustainable for them to keep killing Black people, unjustifiably, as we continue to fight for these policy reforms to prevent the next George Floyd,” he said.

Crump has successfully won multimillion-dollar settlements on behalf of family members in other highly-publicized cases, including Breonna Taylor, who was killed in the exchange of gunfire between her boyfriend and police in March 2020 in Louisville, Ky. The city settled with Taylor’s family in September.

“With Breonna we had the historic $12 million settlement, which was the largest amount for that state of Kentucky. But more importantly, it was the largest amount ever paid out in a pre-trial police brutality death case for a Black woman by a long shot,” said Crump.

Crump also represented the family of Andre Hill, who was fatally shot by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio, last December. Columbus agreed to settle with his family this month.

“We were able to recover $10 million for Andre Hill’s family,” said Crump. “A neighbor called on a 311 call, not a 911 call. And the police came, saw a Black man and just shot first and asked questions later.”

While the U.S. House of Representatives passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the bill has yet to win bipartisan support in the Senate. The legislation includes a number of police reforms, including a ban on chokeholds and no-knock warrants in federal drug cases.

More from Sibile:

‘Stop the shame’: Talkspace, Michael Phelps, Demi Lovato battle against mental illness stigma

College grads: How to get hired with no work experience

These tricky tech job interview questions are meant to throw you off

FDA ‘highly culpable’ for opioid crisis, says ‘Empire of Pain’ author

Why Americans earning $50,000 to $100,000 are pessimistic about homebuying