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Protests Over George Floyd’s Death Spread Across U.S.: Live Updates
A police station was set on fire in Minneapolis as demonstrators denounced the death of a black man while he was in police custody. Twitter attached a warning to a tweet by President Trump.
Right Now
Twitter has flagged a White House tweet for violating its policies on “glorifying violence.” The post repeated the words of an earlier tweet by President Trump.
Here’s what you need to know:
- As a police station burned, Trump threatened violence against those protesting a death in police custody.
- The mayor says the importance of life outweighs the symbolism of a police building.
- Trump suggests protesters could be shot, and Twitter says the president violated its rules.
- Clashes break out across the country.
- A CNN crew covering the protests is arrested on live television.
- Many police departments have sought to ban the use of neck restraints.
- State prosecutors are weighing charges as the Justice Department promised a thorough investigation.
As a police station burned, Trump threatened violence against those protesting a death in police custody.
A Minneapolis police station was overrun and set ablaze by protesters Thursday night as destructive demonstrations raged in the city and spread across the country overnight Friday after the death of George Floyd, an African-American man, in police custody.
He died after pleading, “I can’t breathe,” while a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck. The death set off days of continuing protests and scattered looting of stores in the city, as demonstrators denounced another in a long line of fatal encounters between African-Americans and law enforcement officers.
Early on Friday, officers in plastic face shields and carrying batons remained on some streets, which had largely cleared of protesters. Smoke rose on the city’s horizon. National Guard patrol vehicles were deployed, as firefighters worked nearby at the blackened shell of a building, still smoking, that housed a Family Dollar store.
President Trump, who previously called the video of Mr. Floyd’s death “shocking,” later called the protesters “thugs” on Twitter and said that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” prompting the social media network to attach a warning to the tweet, saying that it violated the company’s rules about “glorifying violence.”
The spectacle of a police station in flames and a president appearing to threaten violence against those protesting the death of a black man in police custody — set against the backdrop of a coronavirus pandemic that has kept many residents from engaging with one another directly for months — added to the anxiety of a nation already plagued by health and economic crises.
Tera Brown, Mr. Floyd’s cousin, has said: “I want to see action. This was clearly murder.”
The demonstration near the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct grew more intense in the hours after prosecutors said that they had not decided whether to charge the officer videotaped pressing his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck for about eight minutes.
The protests have spread across the state, leading to the evacuation on Thursday afternoon of lawmakers and employees from the State Capitol in St. Paul as a precaution.
Protests Over George Floyd’s Death Spread Nationwide
Other protests — many peaceful, some convulsed by violence — were reported across the country.
The State Capitol in Denver was put on lockdown after someone fired a gun near a peaceful demonstration, and protests in Columbus, Ohio, turned chaotic as crowds surging up the steps of the State Capitol and broke windows, videos posted by news outlets showed. The Columbus Dispatch reported that officers also used pepper spray on large crowds of demonstrators downtown after a few protesters tossed smoke bombs and water bottles at lines of officers.
In Phoenix, hundreds of protesters marched toward the State Capitol with relative calm, according to news reports, before tense face-offs with police officers later in the night.
The mayor says the importance of life outweighs the symbolism of a police building.
The anger and the rage in Minneapolis have been building for days.
After prosecutors announced on Thursday that they had not decided whether to charge the police officer who was caught on video with his knee pressed against the neck of George Floyd as the man begged for air, that rage turned to chaos.
Outside the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct station house, the crowds surged, with some people tossing fireworks and other items at officers, while the police fired projectiles back.
The standoff soon spiraled out of control, with officers retreating from the police station in vehicles just after 10 p.m. Thursday local time as protesters stormed the building — smashing equipment, lighting fires and setting off fireworks, according to videos posted from the scene.
“We’re starting fires in here, so be careful,” one man could be heard shouting as sprinklers doused protesters who had burst inside. Flames rose from the front of the building as hundreds of protesters looked on, and soon smoke was billowing from the roof.
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis said at a news conference Friday morning that he had made the call for officers to flee the Third Precinct, saying, “The symbolism of a building cannot outweigh the importance of life.”
Mr. Frey, a Democrat, said he understood the anger of the city’s residents but pleaded with people to stop destroying property and looting stores. “It’s not just enough to do the right thing yourself,” he said. “We need to be making sure that all of us are held accountable.”
Mr. Frey also gave a fiery retort to Mr. Trump’s tweets during a news conference Friday morning.
“Weakness is refusing to take responsibility for your own actions,” he said. “Weakness is pointing your finger at somebody else during a time of crisis.”
“Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis,” he added.
As the unrest escalated, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota activated the National Guard and declared a state of emergency in the Twin Cities after he saw the level of destruction from Wednesday’s protest — buildings on fire, clashes with the police and looted stores. Five hundred members of the Minnesota National Guard were sent to Minneapolis and St. Paul, the state capital.
“Unfortunately, some individuals have engaged in unlawful and dangerous activity, including arson, rioting, looting, and damaging public and private property,” Mr. Walz wrote in his proclamation. “These activities threaten the safety of lawful demonstrators and other Minnesotans, and both first responders and demonstrators have already been injured.”
Trump suggests protesters could be shot, and Twitter says the president violated its rules.
Twitter said early Friday that a tweet from President Trump suggesting that protesters in Minneapolis could be shot violated the company’s rules against “glorifying violence,” in a move that threatens to escalate tensions between Mr. Trump and his favorite social media megaphone over its content policies.
The company prevented users from viewing Mr. Trump’s message without first reading a brief notice describing the rule violation. Twitter also blocked users from liking or replying to Mr. Trump’s post.
But Twitter did not take the message down, saying it was in the public interest for the president’s words remain accessible.
And on Friday morning, the official White House Twitter account posted a tweet that copied the words of Mr. Trump’s earlier post. The White House post was also flagged by Twitter for violating its policies.
Mr. Trump’s tweet about the Minneapolis protests echoed a comment by Walter E. Headley, the Miami police chief who attracted national attention in the late 1960s for using shotguns, dogs and other heavy-handed policies to fight crime in the city’s black neighborhoods.
Mr. Headley announced a “get tough” campaign in a December 1967 news conference that prompted angry reactions from black leaders, The New York Times reported at the time.
“We haven’t had any serious problems with civil uprising and looting,” he said, “because I’ve let the word filter down that when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
“We don’t mind being accused of police brutality,” Mr. Headley also said at that news conference. “They haven’t seen anything yet.”
Clashes break out across the country.
transcript
Protesters Clash With Police in Union Square
At least 40 people were arrested as demonstrators surged into Union Square in New York City to protest what they called police brutality in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
[chanting] I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! Black lives matter! I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! Black lives matter!
Peaceful protests against the death of Mr. Floyd turned chaotic in several cities on Thursday night into Friday morning, with the Denver State Capitol put on lockdown after someone fired a gun near a demonstration, and crowds in Columbus, Ohio, surging up the steps of the State Capitol and breaking windows.
Seven people were struck by gunfire at a protest in Louisville, Ky., on Thursday night as tensions there continued to escalate over the fatal shooting of a black woman by three white police officers in March. Videos posted on social media appeared to show shots being fired while demonstrators surrounded a police vehicle. No officers were among those injured, and it was too early to determine who was responsible, the Louisville Metro Police Department said.
Leslie Herod, a state representative in Colorado, said she had heard several shots near the Denver Statehouse. The Police Department said no injuries were immediately reported.
In Ohio, the police could be seen rushing to the Capitol and ordering protesters to disperse, while downtown, officers used pepper spray on large crowds.
Similar episodes occurred in Phoenix, where hundreds of protesters marched toward the State Capitol relatively calmly before gatherings grew more tense through the night, as some protesters threw stones at the city’s Police Department.
Near the Phoenix State Capitol, a pregnant woman was photographed in apparent pain on the ground. A reporter wrote on Twitter that she had been pepper sprayed.
A video taken at the Denver protest appeared to show the driver of a black S.U.V. plowing through a crowd of protesters who had blocked traffic near the Statehouse. As a protester jumped off the car, the driver sped up and knocked into him. It was unclear whether the protester had been wounded.
“I share the immense anguish we all feel about the unjust murder of George Floyd,” Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado said in a statement. “But let me be clear, senseless violence will never be healed by more violence.”
Peaceful protests were held in several other cities on Thursday night. Demonstrators in Albuquerque, marched through the streets, and in Portland, Ore., a small group waved signs near the Portland Police Bureau.
More than 40 people were arrested on Thursday night in Manhattan as hundreds of New Yorkers joined the nationwide protests. One woman taken into custody at Union Square yelled, “Black lives matter!” as officers dragged her to a police wagon, a video posted online showed.
Images on social media showed sometimes-chaotic scenes in New York as the mostly young protesters clashed with uniformed officers. Some protesters carried signs that read, “No Justice, No Peace” and chanted, “I can’t breathe.”
A CNN crew covering the protests is arrested on live television.
As cameras were rolling, capturing the efforts by the authorities to reestablish control over an area of Minneapolis still smoldering after a night of destruction, the police in Minneapolis arrested members of a CNN crew on live television.
The episode, which took place shortly after 5 a.m. local time, captured the tension on the streets of the city and came after a tumultuous night marked by burning buildings, looting and general unrest.
The three journalists — Omar Jimenez, a correspondent based in Chicago; a producer; and a camera operator — were released about an hour later.
In the moments before the arrest, Mr. Jimenez could be heard clearly identifying himself as a reporter and offering to move wherever he and his crew were directed. Instead, he was placed in custody. The camera kept rolling even as it was left on the ground.
CNN had called on the Minnesota authorities, including the governor, to release the three journalists immediately.
The network had noted in a post on Twitter: “A black reporter from CNN was arrested while legally covering the protests in Minneapolis. A white reporter also on the ground was not.”
Josh Campbell, a CNN correspondent who was also reporting from Minneapolis, said, “There’s a level of heavy-handedness that we’re not used to.”
Alisyn Camerota, a co-host of the broadcast, defended her colleague during the broadcast. “Our correspondent couldn’t have been more cool and cooperative,” she said.
John Berman, her on-air partner, said the CNN legal department was now involved. “We’re not the story, tonight,” Mr. Berman said.
As the episode with the CNN crew played out, lines of police officers moved down the street, calling over loudspeakers for crowds to disperse.
Mr. Berman said that the network’s president, Jeff Zucker, had spoken with Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who apologized and called the incident “totally unacceptable and totally inadvertent.”
On Twitter, the Minnesota State Patrol said: “In the course of clearing the streets and restoring order at Lake Street and Snelling Avenue, four people were arrested by State Patrol troopers, including three members of a CNN crew. The three were released once they were confirmed to be members of the media.”
Many police departments have sought to ban the use of neck restraints.
transcript
Video Shows George Floyd Telling Police He Can’t Breathe
A bystander’s video in Minneapolis shows a police officer with his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck during an arrest. He died a “short time” later, the police said.
Arrested man: [moaning] “What you trying to say?” Police officer: “Relax.” Arrested man: “Man, I can’t breathe — my face —” [inaudible] Police officer: “What do you want?” Arrested man: “I can’t breathe!” Bystander 1: “How long you all got to hold him down?” Unidentified speaker: “Don’t do drugs, kids —” Bystander 2: “This ain’t about drugs, bro.” [inaudible conversation] Bystander 2: “He is human, bro.” Bystander 1: “His nose —” Bystander 2: “ — right now bro, you know it’s broken. You can’t even look at me like a man because you a bum, bro. He’s not even resisting arrest right now, bro.” Bystander 1: “His nose is bleeding.” Bystander 3: He’s passed out!” Bystander 2: “You [expletive] stopping his breathing, right now, bro. You think that’s cool? You think that’s cool? What is that? What do you think that is? You say — you call what he’s doing, OK?” Police officer: “Get back!” Bystander 2: “You’re calling what he’s doing OK. You call what he’s doing OK, bro?” Police officer: “Only firefighters —” Bystander 4: “Yes, I am from Minneapolis.” Bystander 2: “Bro, you, you, you call — you think that’s OK? Check his pulse!” Bystander 4: “The fact that you guys aren’t checking his pulse, and doing compressions if he needs them, you guys are on —” Bystander 1: “Oh my God!” [inaudible] Bystander 4: “OK, yeah, and I have your name tag.” Bystander 5: “Freedom of speech.” [shouting] Bystander 2: “Don’t touch me!”
In the cellphone video of Mr. Floyd’s death, the arresting officer, Derek Chauvin, presses a knee on the back of Mr. Floyd’s neck for about eight minutes until the man on the ground stops speaking or moving.
For police trainers and criminologists, the episode appears to be a textbook case of why many police departments across the country have sought to outright ban or limit the use of chokeholds or other neck restraints in recent years: The practices have too often turned fatal.
“It is a technique that we don’t use as much anymore because of the vulnerability,” said Mylan Masson, a former police officer who ran a training program for the Minneapolis police for 15 years until 2016. “We try to stay away from the neck as much as possible.”
Department records indicate, however, that the Minneapolis police have not entirely abandoned the use of neck restraints, even if the method used by Officer Chauvin is no longer part of police training.
The Minneapolis Police Department’s manual states that neck restraints and chokeholds are basically reserved only for when an officer is caught in a life-or-death situation. There was no such apparent threat during Mr. Floyd’s detention.
Criminologists viewing the tape said that the knee restraint not only put dangerous pressure on the back of the neck, but that Mr. Floyd was also kept lying on his stomach for too long. Both positions — the knee on the neck and lying face down — run the risk of cutting off the oxygen supply.
State prosecutors are weighing charges as the Justice Department promised a thorough investigation.
The Justice Department said on Thursday that it would investigate the officers involved in George Floyd’s death and determine whether they should face federal criminal charges.
The investigation will be led by the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, Erica MacDonald, and by F.B.I. agents in Minneapolis. Attorney General William P. Barr and the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, Eric Dreiband, are closely monitoring their inquiry, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.
“The Department of Justice has made the investigation a top priority and has assigned experienced prosecutors and F.B.I. criminal investigators to the matter,” the department said in a statement.
The department noted that is a violation of federal law for an officer acting in an official capacity to deprive another person of his or her constitutional rights, including the right to be protected from cruel and unusual punishment.
State and federal prosecutors are running simultaneous investigations into Mr. Floyd’s death after a video showed Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, pressing his knee on the neck of Mr. Floyd, who is black, as Mr. Floyd’s body became limp.
Mr. Chauvin and three other officers at the scene, who did nothing to stop Mr. Chauvin, were fired on Tuesday, and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis has called for Mr. Chauvin to be arrested and charged. The Minneapolis Police Department has identified the other officers as Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng.
State prosecutors said early Thursday night that they had not yet decided whether to charge any of the four Minneapolis police officers.
The Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, said on Friday that he expected charges to be filed against the officers. “I have every expectation that they will be,” he said on CNN. But he added the county attorney’s office had primary jurisdiction.
“I hope they are soon,” he added.
Democrats request an investigation into three killings of black people.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department on Thursday to investigate Mr. Floyd’s death along with the recent killings of two other black people: Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot after being pursued by white men near Brunswick, Ga.; and Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police officers in Louisville, Ky., during a “no-knock” raid of her apartment. On Thursday night, seven people were struck by gunfire at a protest in Louisville, Ky., over the death of Ms. Taylor.
The committee members asked the department to open so-called pattern and practice investigations into potential police misconduct in all three cases. Federal law prohibits law enforcement officers from engaging in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their constitutional rights.
They also asked that the department investigate the local prosecutors who were involved in Mr. Arbery’s case. The two armed men who chased Mr. Arbery had connections to local law enforcement and were not arrested for 74 days, until after a video of the shooting was widely circulated.
Mr. Arbery’s death and the subsequent local investigation “are reminiscent of early 20th century lynchings in the Jim Crow South,” the committee members wrote.
Jerry Nadler, the chair of the committee, said it is considering legislation to address racial profiling and the excessive use of force by police officers.
He noted that the Justice Department has uncovered rampant police abuses in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago, which led the police departments in those cities to negotiate consent decrees with the federal government.
At a virtual fund-raiser on Thursday, Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, opened his remarks with a somber reflection on Mr. Floyd’s death, calling it a “brutal, brutal death.” He described the nation as struggling with “an open wound” and nodded to “an ingrained systemic cycle of racism and oppression” in America.
“These tragedies, these injustices cut at the very heart of our most sacred of beliefs: that all Americans, equal in rights and in dignity, are part of an ingrained systemic cycle of racism and oppression that throughout every part of our society,” he said. “We need to make sure justice is real for the Floyd family.”
‘I want to see action’: Mr. Floyd’s family calls for murder charges.
Mr. Floyd’s death — and the recent killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old African-American man who was chased and fatally shot by two white men in Georgia — has prompted comparisons to other killings of black Americans, including Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
The episode was seen as part of a broader pattern of devastating encounters between African-Americans and law enforcement denounced by civil rights leaders. It has laid bare tensions between members of the local community and the 800-plus police force in Minneapolis, a divide mirrored in other communities across the country.
Mr. Floyd’s sister, Bridgett Floyd, called for justice on NBC’s “Today” show.
“I would like for those officers to be charged with murder because that’s exactly what they did,” Ms. Floyd said.
Other members of the Floyd family, appearing on “This Morning” on CBS, said that protests were not enough.
“I don’t want the protests to be for just show,” said Tera Brown, Mr. Floyd’s cousin, who appeared with two of Mr. Floyd’s brothers. “I want to see action.”
“This was clearly murder,” she added. “We want to see them arrested; we want to see them charged; we want to see them convicted for what they did.”
Stephen Jackson, the former N.B.A. player and now podcast host, told “The Today Show” on Thursday that the death of Mr. Floyd, a longtime friend, “destroyed” him.
“I jumped up, screamed, scared my daughter and almost broke my hand punching stuff because I was so mad,” Mr. Jackson said, describing his reaction when he learned the news.
Mr. Jackson told “The Breakfast Club” podcast that he grew up with Mr. Floyd in the Houston area. He joked that they looked so much alike that they could have the same father, so would refer to each other as “Twin.”
“Neighborhoods, they all get beefing,” Mr. Jackson said. “But you always have one guy that can go to all the neighborhoods and everybody will rock with him. Floyd was that guy.”
Reporting was contributed by Marc Santora, Elian Peltier, Raymond Zhong, Russell Goldman, Mike Wolgelenter, Victoria Bekiempis, Katie Benner, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Audra D.S. Burch, Sopan Deb, John Eligon, Matt Furber, Jack Healy, Dan Levin, Edgar Sandoval, Neil MacFarquhar, Katie Glueck, Christine Hauser and Neil Vigdor.
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