Widespread violence as Floyd protests escalate across American cities
Another night of unrest has left parts of dozens of US cities charred and shattered, as years of festering frustrations over police mistreatment of African Americans boiled over in expressions of rage met with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Cars and businesses were torched, the words “I can’t breathe” were spray-painted over buildings and a fire in a rubbish bin burned near the gates of the White House, as tens of thousands marched peacefully through city streets to protest against the death of George Floyd.
Mr Floyd, a black man, died last Monday after a white Minneapolis policeman pressed his knee on his neck while restraining him.
His death is one of a litany of racial tragedies that have thrown the US into chaos amid the coronavirus pandemic that has left millions out of work and killed more than 100,000 people, including disproportionate numbers of black people.
Washington protester Olga Hall said: “We’re sick of it. The cops are out of control. They’re wild. There’s just been too many dead boys.”
Meryl Makielski, a protester in Brooklyn, said: “The mistakes that are happening are not mistakes. They’re repeated violent terrorist offences and people need to stop killing black people.”
But Minnesota’s Democrat governor Tim Walz, condemning the violence, said the protests were no longer about Mr Floyd’s death.
“It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities,” he said.
Protesters set fire to police cars, threw bottles at officers and looted shops.
In Indianapolis, police are investigating multiple shootings amid the protests, including one that left one person dead, adding to deaths in Detroit and Minneapolis in recent days.
In Minneapolis itself, where the protests began, police, state troopers and National Guard members moved in on Saturday soon after an 8pm curfew took effect to break up protests, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to clear streets outside a police station and elsewhere.
At least 13 police officers were injured in Philadelphia when peaceful protests turned violent and at least four police vehicles were set on fire.
In New York, dangerous confrontations flared repeatedly as officers made arrests and cleared streets. A video showed two police cruisers lurching into a crowd of demonstratorswhowerepushinga barricade against one of them and pelting it with objects. Several people were knocked to the ground but it was unclear if anyone was hurt.
Few corners of America are untouched by the protests, with large numbers on the streets from Reno, Fargo and Salt Lake City to Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer in 2014.
Police have arrested at least 1,669 people in 22 cities since Thursday.
Nearly a third of those came in Los Angeles, where the governor declared a state of emergency and ordered the National
Guard to back up the city’s 10,000 police as dozens of fires burned across the city.
President Donald Trump appeared to cheer on the tougher tactics used against protesters on Saturday night, commending the National Guard deployment in Minneapolis as he declared: “No games!” and saying police in New York “must be allowed to do their job!”.
The show of force in Minneapolis came after three days when police largely avoided engaging protesters, and after the state poured in more than 4,000 National Guard troops to the city and said the number would soon rise to nearly 11,000.