US cities extend curfews as anti-racism protests persist
June 1, 2020
Peaceful protests took place across US cities, but pockets of looting prompted officials to introduce curfews to avoid violence. President Trump blamed the far left for violence, while others pointed to the far right.
Image: Reuters/J. Ernst
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DW team in Minneapolis
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Curfews were extended into Monday morning in dozens of US cities, as clashes between police and protesters demonstrating against police brutality continued unabated.
Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Detroit and Washington were all among major US cities put under curfews. The southwestern state of Arizona instituted a state-wide, weeklong curfew after demonstrators there occupied city streets and battled police.
Some 5,000 national guard soldiers have been deployed in 15 US states, as well as in the capital city Washington, in order to provide support to overwhelmed local law enforcement.
During the day, protests were largely peaceful in large metropolitan areas, but pockets of looting activity had led authorities to impose curfews ahead of possible clashes in the evening.
Police shoot at DW reporter
In pictures: US protests over George Floyd, police killings rage in dozens of cities
US protests against the systemic mistreatment of blacks by police have sparked violent confrontations. President Donald Trump has said the military is "ready, willing and able'' to step in.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/J. Cortez
'I can't breathe'
Tense protests over decades of police brutality against black people have quickly spread from Minneapolis to cities across the US. The protests began in the Midwestern city earlier this week, after a police officer handcuffed and pressed a knee on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, until he stopped breathing and died.
Image: picture-alliance/newscom/C. Sipkin
A 'gentle giant'
Floyd grew up in Houston, Texas, and moved to Minneapolis in 2014 for work. Before his death, he was looking for work after having been laid off from his job as a security guard at a Latin bistro due to Minnesota's stay-at-home coronavirus restrictions. Standing 6 feet, 6 inches (1.98 meters) tall, his friends described him as a "gentle giant."
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/O. Messinger
From peaceful to violent
Protests were mostly peaceful on Saturday, though some became violent as the night wore on. In Washington, D.C., the National Guard was deployed outside the White House. At least one person died in shootings in downtown Indianapolis; police said no officers were involved. Officers were injured in Philadelphia, while in New York two NYPD vehicles lurched into a crowd, knocking people to the ground.
Image: picture-alliance/ZUMA/J. Mallin
Shops destroyed, looted
In Los Angeles, protesters faced off with officers with shouts of "Black Lives Matter!" as police confronted crowds with batons and rubber bullets. In some cities including LA, Atlanta, New York, Chicago and Minneapolis, protests have turned into riots, with people looting and destroying local shops and businesses.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/C. Pizello
'When the looting starts…'
President Donald Trump has threatened to send in the military to quell the protests, saying his "administration will stop mob violence and will stop it cold." Trump's response has inflamed tensions across the country. He blamed the rioting on alleged far-left groups, but Minnesota Governor Tim Walz told reporters he had heard multiple unconfirmed reports of white supremacists stoking the violence.
Image: picture-alliance/ZUMA/K. Birmingham
Media in the crosshairs
Many journalists covering the protests have found themselves targeted by law enforcement. On Friday, CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested while covering the story in Minneapolis, and several reporters have been hit with projectiles or detained while on air. DW's Stefan Simons was fired at by police twice as he reported on the unrest over the weekend.
Image: Getty Images/S. Olson
Going global
North of the US border, in Canada, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Vancouver and Toronto. In Berlin, American expats and other demonstrators gathered outside the US Embassy. In London, protesters kneeled in Trafalgar Square before marching past the Houses of Parliament and stopping at the British capital's US Embassy.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Soeder
At Trump's front door
Protests raged in the US capital, Washington, after the district began its 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew on Sunday. More than 1,000 demonstrators gathered in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, with some lighting fires outside the president's residence. <i>The New York Times</i> reported that Secret Service had brought Trump into a bunker as a safety precaution.
Image: Reuters/J. Ernst
Curfews in major US cities
Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Detroit, Washington D.C. and other US cities extended curfews as protests entered a sixth night on Sunday. The state of Arizona in the west instituted a statewide, weeklong curfew after demonstrators clashed with police. Around 5,000 troops from the National Guard also have been deployed in 15 US states.
Image: Reuters/P.T. Fallon
Trump threatens to bring in US military
In the face of renewed protests on Monday, Trump threatened to deploy the military if states failed to "defend their residents." As he made his remarks, security authorities used tear gas and rubber bullets to force protesters from nearby Lafayette Park. Trump then walked from his residence to a church in the park, where he held a Bible aloft during a photo opportunity.
Image: Reuters/T. Brenner
Peaceful demonstrations
Many protests in the US have remained peaceful, with groups of demonstrators standing together against police brutality. In Manhattan's Times Square on Monday, protesters lay on the ground with their hands behind their back, mimicking the position Floyd was in when he was killed. Though some people have resorted to violence, several US mayors and governors have praised the protests.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/T.A. Clary
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In Minneapolis, tensions were still high. The midwestern city has been the epicenter of the latest protest movement, where George Floyd died in police custody when a white police officer pressed his knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes. The police officer was charged with murder on Friday.
On Sunday, a tanker truck barrelled into a crowd of thousands of people protesting on a Minneapolis highway, according to video shared on social media and TV footage, in what the Minnesota Department of Public Safety called a "very disturbing" incident. Officials say no one appeared to be have been hit.
DW reporter Stefan Simons, who was onsite at the highway to report on the incident, said he was shot at by police for the second night in a row. The confrontation came after he and his crew were told to leave the scene and drive away. Shortly after getting into the car, police then shot projectiles at the team.
Simons has been harassed several times by law enforcement while reporting on the ground in Minneapolis. On Saturday night, Simons' team was shot at by police, and, in a separate incident, he was also threatened with arrest.
Radical groups blamed
A litany of videos cycled through social media showing police officers pushing demonstrators to the ground, shooting rubber bullets at journalists, and, in New York City, a police car forcing its way through protesters after being surrounded, all instances that have led to criticism against police response to the protests.
President Donald Trump was active on Twitter on Sunday, blaming Democratic mayors and governors for the disorder and urging them to "get tough."
Trump accused Antifa, a loose network of left-wing affiliated groups that define themselves by their opposition to fascism, of being responsible for most of the unrest. Federal law enforcement has insisted that far-left groups have pushed for violence.
Experts who track extremist groups, as well as news outlets including Vice News, have pointed to evidence that far-right groups have stoked violence. State officials have also suggested that far-right white nationalists, as well as left-wing extremists, have been involved in the violence.
Later in the day, Trump tweeted that he would designate Antifa a "terrorist organization," even though the president alone does not have the power to make such a declaration on behalf of the US.
Protests reach the White House
Shortly after Washington began its curfew at 11:00pm local time (04:00 UTC), protesters set fires near the White House.
Police fired a barrage of tear gas in an attempt to disperse the crowd of more than 1,000 people who had gathered at Lafayette Park, across the street from the presidential residence.
Protesters piled up road signs, plastic barriers, tree branches and even an American flag, and ignited a large fire in the middle of H Street, near the White House.
It was the third night that protesters demonstrated on the president's doorstep. A New York Times report on Sunday said that Trump was rushed by Secret Service agents into an underground bunker at the residence on Friday night.
The last time the bunker had been used was during the September 11 attacks in 2001, when then-Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice were temporarily sheltered there.
In Germany, 1,500 protesters gathered for a third straight day in Berlin on Monday to march in solidarity with the US protesters and call for justice for Floyd. In the southern German city of Munich, some 350 people also staged a protest against police brutality.
