‘Ruining everything’: No end in sight on NY’s streets of fear
The danger wasn’t from the crowds of marchers who defied the early curfew in New York. It was in the hidden side streets where things turned ugly fast, writes US correspondent Sarah Blake.
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“There, that’s the Zara, that’s the first one we hit,” said one of the scrappy boys, pointing to a ransacked women’s clothing store on the corner as he brushed past me with his two friends.
I couldn’t tell you any more about what they looked like other than that they were lean, in dark clothes, baggy jeans, with masks pulled up high under low baseball caps.
They laughed and jostled each other as they pushed past, before whooping at the dozens of police officers across the road and running away.
Around the corner, a block from City Hall, shots were fired 20 minutes earlier, and a few blocks in the other direction a car was set alight.
It was an hour and 40 minutes past curfew in lower Manhattan and things were getting ugly, quick.
The danger wasn’t from the big crowds of marchers who defied the early curfew in New York City.
The threat was in the darker corners, the side streets. The empty subway carriage that brought a spike of fear when two scowling, pasty teens lurched toward us before moving to the door at the other end to spray paint some anarchy symbols.
I spent a few days on the ground with Mexico’s Sinaloa State Police last year during a cartel crackdown and there were a couple of moments in Manhattan when I felt more menace than I had in one of the world’s most dangerous cities.
The open lawlessness of the looters and the tension as police started to get into it with them made it feel like anything could happen.
After a day of blistering pressure from their President, governor and mayor over a riotous Monday night that brought the city to its knees, New York’s finest managed to keep their streets much calmer.
On a warm spring day, tens of thousands had assembled in parks and on streets to protest the police killings of black Americans.
At Bryant Park, on the lawn outside the New York Public Library, a motley crowd of hundreds chanted and cheered a Black Lives Matter speaker.
There were pockets where pot smoke was thick in the air and lots of groups of young New Yorkers gathered in circles, most of them in masks, all of them clearly happy to have broken out of their homes after two months of strict lockdown.
Mayor Bill De Blasio had pulled the curfew forward from 11pm to 8pm and as the deadline approached the streets started to empty. Many of the marchers made their way home, dragging their signs along with them.
As it has each recent day in cities across the country, dark brought out the opportunists and thugs.
Brooklyn friends Ellis Lowell and Sharon Kalen condemned the looters who smashed into the Zara store as they were marching past.
“It was calm, everyone was peaceful, and then the looters started throwing bricks,” said Ms Kalen, 28, who works in TV production.
“They started pulling down all the plywood off the front of the store and smashed the glass. It was so quick.
“They are ruining everything these people. They made the police come and then they just started arresting everyone.
“It’s a mess.”
Originally published as ‘Ruining everything’: No end in sight on NY’s streets of fear