The Philadelphia curfew would not be maintained for a second night.
New York, United States:
The mayor of Philadelphia said Thursday that a curfew he had enforced the night before due to unrest following the police murder of a black man would not be maintained for a second night.
Mayor Jim Kenney nonetheless called on residents to stay at home except in an emergency.
“There won’t be a citywide curfew tonight,” Kenney wrote on Twitter.
“However, we encourage residents to stay at home, unless travel is required.”
The curfew was in effect overnight in Pennsylvania’s largest city after unrest sparked by the fatal police shooting Monday on Walter Wallace, 27, which was captured in a video posted to social media.
Thousands of people took to the streets, with looting and violence. Fifty-seven police officers were injured, including one seriously, a police spokesperson said.
The two days of unrest also saw 210 arrests.
The city was quieter on Wednesday evening, AFP journalists reported, but a number of stores were still damaged or looted.
Police shot Wallace, who was carrying a knife, after he refused to drop the gun as his mother tried to restrain him.
An attorney for Wallace’s family, Shaka Johnson, said he was bipolar and the call to emergency services was for an ambulance.
Johnson also said police fired 14 times when just once could have dispelled the danger. Wallace’s dad asked why officers weren’t using stun guns instead.
The two officers, whose names have not been released, have been suspended.
Police and prosecutors are investigating the murder and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has pledged transparency.
Kenney said Thursday that he hoped to post footage from the cameras carried by police officers soon that could help clarify the circumstances of the shooting.
Johnson was quoted by local media as saying the footage, viewed by the family on Thursday, showed Wallace “in obvious mental health crisis” and family members shouting “he’s mental”.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer report, Johnson said one of the officers shouted “shoot him.”
Wallace’s death and the protests and unrest that followed reignited a political clash between Republicans and Democrats days before the presidential election.
Pennsylvania is a key state of the battlefield in the race between President Donald Trump, who has focused on the unrest to bolster his claims to be the “public order” candidate, and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
The United States has seen waves of race-related protests and riots since the police murder of African American George Floyd in Minnesota in May.
