Commentators are weighing in on the protests and riots that have gripped Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd, with CNN's Van Jones saying 'I haven't seen black people this upset in 20 years.'

'If you are white and are you watching this, look in your own life,' Jones said on CNN Thursday.

'How are you choking off black dignity? Choking off black opportunity? Choking off black people from asking an opportunity to thrive?'

'Because it's not just that officer. This is a much deeper problem. How are all of us complicit in this?
And how are all of us allowing this to happen?' he said.

'I don't have an answer to that,' Jones continued. 'I have not seen black people this upset in 20 years, maybe longer.'

Floyd, 46, died on Monday after bystander video showed police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck for at least seven minutes while Floyd was handcuffed during an arrest on forgery charges.

On Friday afternoon, Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, after being fired from the Minneapolis police force. 

Three other officers - Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J Alexander Kueng - have been fired over Floyd's fatal arrest but do not yet face charges.

Protests over Floyd's death have spread nationwide and turned to violence in Minneapolis, where a police precinct was overrun and set on fire overnight on Thursday.

It follows high-profile protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore in 2015, over the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, respectively.

'We thought we got an answer, it's called body cams — that we just put body cams on all these cops and you can see what they were doing,' Jones said.

'They would either be stopped or the public would be so outraged.'