The second day of demonstrations was accompanied by looting and vandalism
MINNEAPOLIS:
Protesters in Minneapolis on Wednesday clashed with riot police who fired tear gas in a rage over the death of a black man seen in a widely broadcast video gasping for air a white officer knelt down.
The video, taken by a spectator during the fatal Monday evening meeting between the police and George Floyd, 46, shows him lying face down on the ground and handcuffed, groaning for help and saying repeatedly: “Please please, I can’t breathe “before I get still.
The second day of protests, accompanied by looting and vandalism, began a few hours after Mayor Jacob Frey urged prosecutors to lay criminal charges against the white policeman shown pinning Floyd on the street.
Floyd, who was unarmed and allegedly tried to smuggle counterfeit tickets into a nearby restaurant, was taken by ambulance to the scene of his arrest and pronounced dead the same evening at the hospital.
The policeman shown kneeling on Floyd’s neck and three other officers involved were dismissed from the police service on Tuesday as the FBI opened an investigation.
Hundreds of demonstrators, whose faces were covered, stormed the streets of the Third District police station late Wednesday, about 800 meters from where Floyd was arrested, chanting “No justice, no peace” and “I can not breathe”.
The crowd rose to thousands at dusk and the protest turned into a dead end outside the station, where riot police formed barricades while the protesters mocked them from behind makeshift barricades.
The police, some taking up positions on the rooftops, used tear gas, plastic bullets and shock grenades to keep the crowd at bay. Protesters bombed the police with stones and other projectiles. Some have returned tear gas canisters to the police.
Television news footage from a helicopter over the area showed dozens of people looting a Target store, missing clothes and baskets full of goods.
Fires broke out after dark in several businesses, including an auto parts store. Eyewitnesses stated that the fires appeared to be the work of arsonists. The media reported that a small peaceful demonstration was held outside the home of one of the police.
Anger on the west coast
Outrage over Floyd’s death also sparked a rally on his behalf against police brutality by hundreds of people in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon.
The protest turned violent after a crowd stepped on a nearby freeway and blocked traffic, then attacked two California Highway Patrol cruisers, smashing their windows, local media reported. A protester clinging to the hood of a patrol car fell on the sidewalk as he walked away and was treated on site by paramedics, showed pictures of the incident.
Video of Monday’s deadly confrontation between Minneapolis police and Floyd led Mayor Frey to call Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman on Wednesday “to charge the arresting officer in this case”.
The city has identified the four officers as Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J Alexander Kueng. He did not specify who had kneeled on Floyd’s neck and gave no other information.
The local police union said the police were cooperating with the investigators and warned of a “haste to trial”.
“We have to review all the videos. We have to wait for the medical examiner’s report,” said the union statement.
The county attorney’s office said it would decide what to do after the investigators finished their investigation.
The case recalled the murder of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man in New York in 2014, who died after being placed in a prohibited police bottleneck.
Garner’s dying words, “I can’t breathe,” have become a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement calling attention to a wave of murders of African Americans by police using unjustified lethal force.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
