Buffalo police officers suspended after shoving elderly protester

Two US police suspended, others resign en mase, as video of run-in with elderly protester goes viral. WARNING: Graphic

A 75-year-old protester bleeds from his ear after being shoved by Buffalo, New York, police, on June 4.

WARNING: Graphic content

Prosecutors are investigating after a video captured police in Buffalo shoving a 75-year-old man who then fell and cracked his head, a confrontation that resulted in the suspension of two officers.

Video from public radio station WBFO of Thursday night’s encounter, which happened near the conclusion of protests over the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, quickly sparked public outrage and a protest by city police who felt the officers were being mistreated.

Just about an hour ago, police officers shove man in Niagara Square to the ground (WARNING: Graphic). Video from: @MikeDesmondWBFO pic.twitter.com/JBKQLvzfET

— WBFO (@WBFO) June 5, 2020

It shows a man identified as Martin Gugino approaching a line of helmeted officers holding batons as they clear demonstrators from Niagara Square around the time of an 8pm curfew. Two officers push Gugino backward, and he hits his head on the pavement. Blood spills as officers walk past. One officer leans down to check on the injured man before he is urged along by another officer. Gugino and the officers all appear to be white, but details of their backgrounds were not released.

“Why? Why was that necessary? Where was the threat?” asked Gov. Andrew Cuomo at his daily briefing Friday. The governor said he spoke to Mr Gugino, who had been hospitalised in serious condition. “It’s just fundamentally offensive and frightening. How did we get to this place?”

The confrontation raised concerns about more possible flare-ups in Buffalo this weekend, especially after city officers resigned en masse from the police squad charged with crowd control. The resigning officers are not leaving their jobs.

“Fifty-seven resigned in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders,” said John Evans, Police Benevolent Association president, according to WGRZ.

‘Black Lives Matter Plaza’

Meanwhile, activists and city officials planned for huge gatherings on Saturday near the White House and other Washington landmarks as demonstrators push on with their call for wholesale justice reform after the killing of George Floyd.

The District of Columbia’s government vividly expressed its solidarity with protesters on Friday, when city-authorised volunteers painted the words “Black Lives Matter” in huge yellow letters — from kerb to kerb — on 16th Street just north of the White House. They also hung a sign denoting its intersection with H Street as “Black Lives Matter Plaza.”

“I want to welcome all peaceful protesters to Washington, D.C.,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said on Friday as she stood near St. John’s Church, where on Monday President Trump had held a Bible aloft after law-enforcement personnel forcibly cleared the area of peaceful protesters.

The largest gatherings are expected in the early afternoon Saturday near the White House and Lincoln Memorial. A peaceful protest against police brutality also is planned for Saturday afternoon on Capitol Hill. In addition, a march to the newly named Black Lives Matter Plaza, near the White House complex, is planned for the early evening.

Gia Coleman, 37, said she drove eight hours with a friend from Worcester, Mass., arriving at the scene near the White House on Friday afternoon.

Demonstrators march in the rain during a peaceful protest against police brutality on June 5, 2020 in Washington, DC.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on television. I was upset by the unrest,” she said. “I feel like I had to come here. How could I not?” Orpheus Triplett, 33, who works in landscaping, said he had driven up to Washington from Virginia Beach, Va., to join the demonstrations because he has been personally “harassed by police officers” for years. “I would go sit in court rooms for hours and hours and see how blacks were being treated differently,” he said.

Erick Walker, 51, who drove from Cleveland, said he couldn’t sleep after watching the video of Mr. Floyd being killed in Minneapolis on May 25 after police arrested him. “Something has to be done, some type of legislation, some type of something, because this cannot continue,” he said.

A new street sign that reads "Black Lives Matter Plaza NW" can be seen at the intersection of H and 16th Street near the White House.

District of Columbia Police Chief Peter Newsham said he expected the largest crowds in Washington since the demonstrations began late last month. City authorities said they would be limiting traffic in much of central Washington for all of Saturday in anticipation of what police called “multiple First Amendment demonstrations.” As the protests have continued over the last few days in the capital, looting and other violence has eased, with D.C. police reporting no protest-related arrests on Wednesday or Thursday. “We are hopeful tomorrow will be the same,” Mr. Newsham said on Friday.

That marks a big change from the night of Monday into Tuesday, when 289 people were arrested, mostly for curfew violations but also for rioting, burglary and other property crimes.

Washington is well accustomed to large-scale protests. The largest in recent years, coming shortly after President Trump’s 2017 inauguration, was the Women’s March, which drew hundreds of thousands of people to the capital.

Mr. Trump has said his administration’s deployment of National Guard units and law-enforcement personnel from various federal agencies has been key to quelling the violence in Washington.

Ms. Bowser, along with some Democratic and Republican politicians, has criticised that approach after such forces on Monday used smoke canisters and pepper balls, which sting the eyes and lead to coughing, to clear Lafayette Square, across the street from St. John’s Church, before Mr. Trump went there from the nearby White House.

As demonstrators gathered near the church Friday, workers were erecting tall steel interlocking gates around the White House complex and federal land stretching to Constitution Avenue. Machines lifted massive concrete barricades from flatbed trucks and placed them behind the gates.

The White House is seen through several layers of recently erected security fencing and barricades from the north side of Lafayette Square.

The mayor wrote a letter to Mr. Trump on Thursday calling on him to withdraw all extraordinary federal law-enforcement and military presence from the city.

Ms. Bowser authorised the mobilisation of some 1,200 members of the D.C. National Guard, but has objected to the government calling in guardsmen from other states. About 3,300 Guard members have deployed to Washington from Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.

In response, Mr. Trump tweeted: “The incompetent Mayor of Washington, D.C., @MayorBowser, who’s budget is totally out of control and is constantly coming back to us for ‘handouts’, is now fighting with the National Guard, who saved her from great embarrassment over the last number of nights.”

Asked about the president’s tweet during a news conference Friday, Ms. Bowser said, “I think we all have to just refocus on what’s in front of us, and that is that our nation is hurting, it’s in need of healing and leadership at all levels.”

In a push to de-escalate tensions, the District of Columbia National Guard has ordered all Guardsmen to not carry their weapons when on duty in Washington for protests, defence officials said Friday.

A U.S. official said that before Wednesday’s order, fewer than a dozen of the National Guardsmen dispatched to Washington carried firearms in the streets, and none had chemical irritants, rubber-ball grenades or other crowd-control weapons beyond a baton, shield and protective gear.

Also on Friday, the Pentagon ordered approximately 1,600 active-duty federal troops — who had been positioned outside Washington in case they were called in to quell disorder — to return to their home bases, officials said.

The mayor said the conflict over how to handle the demonstrations underscored the District’s long struggle to be recognised as a state and gain autonomy from the federal government.

“We’re 700,000 people here,” she said. “We pay taxes just like every American.” Warren P. Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.

The Wall Street Journal, with AP