George Floyd death: Trump threatens to release ‘vicious dogs’, police injured as unrest continues
Tens of thousands of rioters tore through America’s major cities last night, as the increasingly violent protests entered its fifth day.
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Tens of thousands of rioters tore through America’s major cities last night, attacking police, torching cars and buildings and defying curfews in increasingly violent clashes.
New York’s Times Square, the White House and blocks of Los Angeles were among iconic US locations targeted on the fifth night of protests over the police killing of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis.
Two NYPD cruisers drove into a crowd of protesters as arsonists struck across the city, at least 13 Philadelphia cops were injured, and there were multiple shootings in Indianapolis.
US President Donald Trump threatened to unleash “vicious dogs” on anyone who breached the White House as the National Guard joined the Secret Service in a cordon to defend the building against a rowdy crowd.
Curfews were enforced nationwide, cities declared states of emergency and looters emptied and burned CBD department stores and banks after overrunning and assaulting police officers.
Minneapolis, where George Floyd’s on-camera death as he was pinned for almost nine minutes beneath a white officer’s knee last Monday sparked this powder keg, suffered through its fifth straight night of chaos.
Minnesota Governor Tim Palz said the state was deploying 11,000 National Guard troops, its entire force, for the first time in history.
“The situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd,” said Mr Walz.
“It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities.”
Mr Walz earlier said Minneapolis was being targeted by extremists and organised groups, including drug cartels, white supremacists and far-left Antifa thugs.
Entire blocks of the midwest city have smouldered for days, leaving a trail of ransacked stores and burnt-out buildings and destroying at least 170 local businesses.
Police there took their first major victory about 9pm local time, pushing back protesters who had besieged the inner-city Fifth Precinct.
This was the police station where Mohamed Noor, the rookie cop who shot dead former Sydney life-coach Justine Ruszczyk Damond in 2017, worked.
There were dozens of arrests overnight, according to Department of Corrections Commission Paul Schnell.
Officer Derek Chauvin was on Friday charged with murdering Mr Floyd during an arrest for passing a fake $20 note. The delay in charges against his three colleagues, who also leaned on Mr Floyd, further inflamed protests.
According to the White House, more than 80 per cent of the rioters tearing through the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul were from out of state.
President Donald Trump has reportedly put the Army’s Military Police on notice to step in, for the first time since 1992.
In a speech following the successful SpaceX NASA launch in Cape Canaveral, he called for calm and said the country would not fall to anarchists.
“I understand the pain that people are feeling,” he said.
“We support the right of peaceful protesters, and we hear their pleas. But what we are now seeing on the streets of our cities has nothing to do with justice or with peace.
“The memory of George Floyd is being dishonoured by rioters, looters, and anarchists. The violence and vandalism is being led by Antifa and other radical left-wing groups who are terrorising the innocent, destroying jobs, hurting businesses, and burning down buildings.
“The main victims of this horrible, horrible situation are the citizens who live in these once lovely communities. The mobs are devastating the life’s work of good people and destroying their dreams. Right now, America needs creation, not destruction; co-operation, not contempt; security, not anarchy. And there will be no anarchy. Civilisation must be cherished, defended, and protected. The voices of law-abiding citizens must be heard.”
As Saturday dawned, cleaning crews had taken to the streets of cities such as Atlanta, the scene of mayhem the night before, and repainted the CNN building that the night before was attacked.
But as evening came, with many cities spiking temperatures around 30 degrees celsius, tens of thousands defied curfews and grouped on streets.
Chaos erupted in capitals across the country, where racially diverse crowds, many of them filming non-stop with their cell-phones, butted up against officers in riot gear.
They were hit with pepper spray, tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets, many engaging in rolling battles with law enforcement.
The unrest spread to dozens more cities, including Tulsa, Oklahoma, where 300 black people were massacred in 1921, and Tallahassee, Florida, where a pick-up truck ploughed through a crowd of protesters.
LA’s up-market cafe-lined Fairfax district resembled a war zone as dozens of riot-squad officers tried to enforce an 8pm curfew amid trashfires and destroyed businesses.
The city deployed its National Guard for the first time in almost 30 years, since the 1992 Rodney King riots.
Eleven states and Washington DC activated their National Guard and at least 25 cities imposed curfews.
Authorities said more than 1300 people had been arrested in 16 cities since Thursday, including more than 500 on Friday in Los Angeles.
In New York, A 27-year-old woman was charged with the attempted murder of four officers after throwing a molotov cocktail at a marked police cruiser in Brooklyn.
The bottle didn’t explode and none of the officers were injured in the attack, which happened late Friday night local time.
Samantha Shader, from the Catskills, allegedly bit officers who tried to arrest her, and her 21 year old sister was charged with interfering with the arrest.
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Shocking footage shows the moment NYPD officers drive an SUV directly into protesters as race riots explode across the US over the police killing of unarmed black Minneapolis man George Floyd.
Mobile phone footage shows the NYPD vehicle driving into a large crowd of protesters who had erected a barricade in Brooklyn’s Flatbush area.
Demonstrators hurled objects at the vehicle as it barrelled into the crowd. It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured in the incident.
Cites across the US including Atlanta, Denver and Columbus have today implemented curfews in a bid to halt the rising violence and damage to buildings.
In chaotic scenes, protesters were filmed vandalising police cars in Chicago, CNN reports.
In Los Angeles, protests turned violent as police cars were set alight in the Fairfax area.
In Philadephia, an angry mob vandalised and set fire to a statue of former mayor and police commissioner Frank Rizzo outside the city’s Municipal Services building.
The White House was locked down, Brooklyn police officers were forced to defend a station house from rioters, and protesters swarmed broadcaster CNN’s Atlanta headquarters in a night of carnage fuelled by pent-up fury after months of historic job losses and lockdowns.
Two Federal Protective Service officers were shot amid protests in Oakland, California, killing one of them.
And a 19-year-old man was shot dead in downtown Detroit after bullets were fired into a crowd from an SUV.
At least six states and Washington D.C have called in the National Guard. Minnesota, Georgia, Ohio, Colorado, Denver, Kentucky are among those who have requested the National Guard to assist with local law enforcement, CNN says.
US President Donald Trump said many of the protesters were “organised groups” that “had nothing to do with George Floyd”.
And he praised Secret Service officers, warning what would have happened to anyone who managed to breach the White House.
He said they would “have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen”.
Great job last night at the White House by the U.S. @SecretService. They were not only totally professional, but very cool. I was inside, watched every move, and couldn’t have felt more safe. They let the “protesters†scream & rant as much as they wanted, but whenever someone....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
These are “Organized Groups†that have nothing to do with George Floyd. Sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
The professionally managed so-called “protesters†at the White House had little to do with the memory of George Floyd. They were just there to cause trouble. The @SecretService handled them easily. Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020
More than 80 per cent of the rioters tearing through Minnesota were from out of state, the White House said.
US Attorney-General Bill Barr said: “In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organised and driven by anarchic left extremist groups, far left extremist groups using Antifa-like tactics”.
Mr Trump said he would bring the weight of the military to curb further unrest.
“Crossing State lines to incite violence is a FEDERAL CRIME,” he said on social media.
“Liberal Governors and Mayors must get MUCH tougher or the Federal Government will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests.”
The Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz said he is fully mobilising the National Guard for the first time in the state’s history in a bid to quell the violence after consulting Department of Defence officials.
Mr Walz claimed white supremacists, armed militia and drug cartels were trying to maximise the havoc and chaos on the streets of Minneapolis and across the country.
“The cartels, who are wondering if there was a break in their drug transmissions, are trying to take advantage of the chaos. That’s why this situation is on a federal level.”
Mr Walz said he is working with the federal government to gather intelligence on who is taking part in the violence and whether they belong to organised groups.
“Last night is a mockery of pretending that this is about George Floyd’s death, or inequities, or historical traumas to our communities of colour,” Mr Walz said.
“The situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd, it is about attacking civil society, instilling fear, and disrupting our great cities.
“As you saw this expand across the United States, and you start to see whether it be domestic terrorism, whether it be ideological extremists to fan the group, or whether it be international destabilisation of how our country works.”
Minnesota’s National Guard said in a tweet that more than 1000 military members would be activating.
“More than 1000 additional Citizen-Soldiers and Airmen are activating today,” the state’s National Guard tweeted.
“This is in addition to the 700 that were on duty as of late last night. This represents the largest domestic deployment in the Minnesota’s National Guard’s 164-year history.”
The Pentagon was poised to deploy Military Police officers to the unrest, after US President Donald Trump reportedly asked Defence Secretary Mark Esper to install order.
The army officers would be deployed under the Insurrection Act of 1807, which had last been used to quell the 1992 riots that swept Los Angeles after the Rodney King trial, according to AP.
Meanwhile, the NYPD is investigating an officer filmed shoving a much smaller, female protester to the ground during a demonstration in Brooklyn over the death of George Floyd.
The video, first posted by Newsweek reporter Jason Lemon, shows a uniformed NYPD officer using two hands to toss the woman to the pavement. She flies like a ragdoll into the curb as others scream “get his badge number!”
According to Lemon, the officer called the protester a “stupid f – king bitch” before throwing her to the ground.
Multiple police officers from inside the NYPD told me that this officer who assaulted the young woman is Vincent J. D’Andraia is the 73rd Precinct.
— Shaun King (@shaunking) May 30, 2020
They said he brutalizes Black people all over Brownsville.
And so does NYPD Commander Craig Eldelman, who is in the white shirt. pic.twitter.com/z2wJLq8Y3T
An NYPD spokeswoman said Saturday the incident “is under internal review.”
The young woman in the video, Dounya Zayer, has since come forward to debunk “lies” that she spit in the officer’s face.
“I was protesting for a reason,” Ms Zayer says from a hospital bed in a video on Twitter. “And the officers who were at this protest, they should back down, they should apologise.
“Because they’re wearing blue and they’re part of the gang that killed George Floyd.”
— Dounya Zayer (@zayer_dounya) May 30, 2020
A 27-year-old woman from upstate New York was charged with the attempted murder of four officers after throwing a molotov cocktail at a marked police cruiser in Brooklyn.
The bottle didn’t explode and none of the officers were injured in the attack, which happened late Friday night local time.
Samantha Shader, from the Catskills, allegedly bit officers who tried to arrest her, and her 21- year-old sister was charged with interfering with the arrest.
Here’s social media pics of the two sisters arrested in last night’s protest again cops in Brooklyn. Samantha Shader (left) is accused of throwing Molotov cocktail at NYPD van, while Darian Shader is charged with resisting arrest pic.twitter.com/JwV0CQd995
— Shawn Cohen (@spccohen) May 30, 2020
While many of the protests started peacefully in the name of justice, some turned violent and opportunistic after dark, with thugs looting and trashing businesses across the country in acts of “wanton violence”.
The clashes came after the white police officer who was filmed kneeling on the neck of Mr Floyd until he stopped breathing was charged with murder.
Rioters were met with tear gas and rubber bullets in Minneapolis on its fourth straight night of chaos, after hundreds defied an 8pm curfew.
National guardsmen in tanks deployed tear gas and rubber bullets outside the city’s 3rd Precinct police station that was overtaken and burnt down a night before.
In New York, thousands of protesters outside Brooklyn’s Barclays Centre stadium faced off with police, throwing bottles and chanting.
Hundreds of protesters then surrounded the nearby 88th Precinct, setting fire to a police van before being rebuffed by a huge show of NYPD force.
“We don’t ever want to see another night of this,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
In Atlanta, rioters breached broadcaster CNN’s headquarters, setting fire to cars, smashing through the building’s glass front with baseball bats and firing BB bullets at officers and workers there. In Minneapolis, police arrested a black CNN journalist Omar Jiminez despite his offer to move back from a riot zone.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said: “This is not a protest, this is chaos.”
The Secret Service briefly locked down the White House after thousands surrounded the building in DC protests, some trying to scale the building’s fences.
The furious outpouring came after Minneapolis prosecutors laid the same charges against Officer Derek Chauvin that they successfully used to jail killer cop Mohamed Noor over the death of former Sydney woman Justine Ruszczyk Damond in 2017.
Chauvin was charged with third degree murder and manslaughter, which carry a maximum 25 year sentence.
His wife also filed for divorce, saying she was “devastated” for Mr Floyd’s family after seeing the video of his death.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said he would also use the Noor prosecution team to go after Chauvin and three other police who were filmed in the fatal arrest attempt of Mr Floyd.
“We felt it appropriate to focus on the most dangerous perpetrator,” Mr Freeman said, adding that further charges were possible.
Court papers revealed the last moments of Mr Floyd’s life and alleged Chauvin ignored another officer’s concern that the 46-year-old father of two was having trouble breathing.
The four officers detained Mr Floyd for suspected forgery after he allegedly tried to pass a fake $20 note in a deli. He resisted arrest, according to the criminal complaint, by using his body weight to fall down and avoid being placed in their police car.
The papers revealed he pinned down Mr Floyd for eight minutes and 46 seconds, including three minutes after he was unresponsive.
“Police are trained that this type of restraint of a subject in a prone position is inherently dangerous,” the complaint states.
A preliminary autopsy report found Mr Floyd didn’t die from strangulation or “traumatic asphyxia” but that his “underlying health conditions including coronary disease and hypertensive disease” had contributed.
“The combined effects of Mr Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death,” said the report lodged with Hennepin County Court.
It also emerged that Mr Floyd and Chauvin, 44, once worked overlapping security shifts at a club in the city.
Their former boss said she didn’t believe they knew each other well and it was unlikely they recognised each other, but recounted how Chauvin, 44, a veteran officer who moonlighted for her, would get “very skittish” on African-American themed nights.
“They would get very nervous very quickly and they would call for back-up quicker,” Maya Santamaria said of Chauvin and his police peers.
“One little thing would happen, maybe a fight would happen, and I would go downstairs and five or six on-duty, on-patrol (officers) would be there.
“I always thought it was a bit unjustified.”
Mr Trump has been accused of inflaming the discord with his social media messaging. He yesterday walked back from a controversial tweet stating “when the looting starts the shooting starts”, saying he wasn’t threatening to order the military to fire on protesters but rather noting the shootings that have been part of the protests.
Mr Trump said he had spoken to the Floyd family, describing them as “terrific people”.
And Mr Trump’s predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama, the first black president, urged Americans to reshape what was “normal”.
“It’s natural to wish for life ‘to just get back to normal’ as a pandemic and economic crisis up-end everything around us,” Mr Obama said.
“This shouldn’t be ‘normal’ in 2020 America. It can’t be ‘normal’ If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must be better.”
Originally published as George Floyd death: Trump threatens to release ‘vicious dogs’, police injured as unrest continues