Philadelphia sets citywide curfew to quell unrest after fatal shooting of Black man
PHILADELPHIA, (Reuters) - Philadelphia officials imposed a citywide after-dark curfew yesterday, seeking to avert a third night of violence amid protests over the fatal police shooting of a Black man wielding a knife and described by family as undergoing a nervous breakdown.
The streets of Pennsylvania’s largest city have been tense since Walter Wallace, 27, was gunned down on
Monday by two police officers responding to what his relatives say was a call for assistance with a mental health crisis.
His death set off two nights of looting and periodic skirmishes between police in riot gear and protesters decrying the shooting as the latest instance of racially biased policing in a U.S. criminal justice system that often subjects African Americans to lethal force.
Calm prevailed as a 9 p.m.-to-6 p.m. curfew ordered by Mayor Jim Kenney took effect about three hours after sundown on Wednesday.
A protest rally planned for earlier in the evening was postponed, then called off, after fewer than a dozen people turned out. Four individuals were later detained for curfew violations, but the arrests were uneventful.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, said he mobilized state National Guard troops to assist local law enforcement and emergency responders until order was firmly restored. The troops were expected to begin arriving on Friday.
Philadelphia police made 172 arrests, and 53 officers were injured over two nights that began with peaceful demonstrations but gave way to looting of big-box stores and other businesses, some of them still recovering from unrest in the summer.
City officials said as many as 1,000 people were involved in looting in one corner of the city on Tuesday night, catching police off guard.
“These individuals are doing nothing but simply wasting our precious resources,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw told a news conference on Wednesday, condemning what she called “widespread lawlessness.”
The turmoil turned Philadelphia into the latest flashpoint over racial justice days ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election. It caps months of protests ignited by the May 25 death of George Floyd, a Black man in handcuffs, as he was pinned by his neck to the street under the knee of a white Minneapolis policeman.