Protest and unrest continues as US cities impose curfews

Alan Loughnane

Governors of six states have called in the National Guard.

Tense protests and demonstrations against the killing of George Floyd and others spread across the US on Saturday night and into Sunday.

It marks another day of unrest as anger continues to grow over the death of Floyd.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets to call for more arrests and more severe murder charges following the killing of George Floyd, who died after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, ignoring pleas from Floyd that he couldn’t breathe and screams of onlookers who pleaded with Chauvin to take his knee off Floyd’s neck.

The demonstrations were marked by chants of “I can’t breathe” and were mostly peaceful, though some did descend into violence.

According to a tally by Associated Press, as of Saturday evening, police had arrested nearly 1,400 in 17 cities since Thursday.

On the fifth night of protests in Minneapolis, protestors ignored the 8pm curfew introduced by the governor and police responded by using force in an attempt to move on the otherwise peaceful crowd.

Police used pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets as they fanned out throughout the city with police targeting everyone from first aid workers to news reporters.

Curfews have been imposed in many cities, including Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Denver, but have been ignored with thousands of people milling to the streets.

Protesters clashed with police beyond metropolitan areas including in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Little Rock, Arkansas; Albany, New York; Fargo, North Dakota; and Raleigh, North Carolina.

President Donald Trump said he “Antifa and other radical groups” for stoking the riots.

Video footage recorded by onlookers in New York appeared to show a police vehicle driving into a crowd of protestors, knocking some of them to the ground.

NYPD officers just drove an SUV into a crowd of human beings. They could‘ve killed them, &we don’t know how many they injured.

NO ONE gets to slam an SUV through a crowd of human beings.@NYCMayor these officers need to be brought to justice, not dismissed w/“internal reviews.” https://t.co/oIaBShSC1S

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 31, 2020

“The video was upsetting, and I wish the officers hadn’t done that,” New York York Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

“But I also understood that they didn’t start the situation. The situation was started by a group of protesters converging on a police vehicle, attacking that vehicle.”

The following areas have introduced a curfew: