Protests in California Follow the Death of George Floyd

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Over the weekend, in at least 140 cities across the country, demonstrators took to the streets in outpourings of grief and rage over the death of George Floyd, a black Minneapolis man who, before he died, pleaded with the white police officer who had pinned him to the ground with a knee on his neck.

“I can’t breathe,” he can be heard saying in a graphic video.

[See photos of the protests around the nation.]

In California — despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s support of the demonstrations and assurances about the will to better address systemic racism — widespread protests sparked by Mr. Floyd’s death were yet another reminder that the state’s progressive politics haven’t healed deep wounds in black and Latino communities, which continue to be the targets of disproportionate policing here, just as they are in other parts of the country.

And so, Californians in cities large and small joined the protests. Many of the demonstrations started peacefully and became violent, with widespread looting. Hundreds have been arrested.

It’s not comprehensive, but here’s a look at some of what happened:

Protests in Los Angeles

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti at first reassured Angelenos that he wouldn’t call in the National Guard, although demonstrations downtown had taken a destructive turn.

“This is not 1992,” he said, referencing the riots that year spurred by Los Angeles police officers’ beating of Rodney King.

[Read about how past presidents responded to protests against police brutality.]

But by Saturday afternoon, after police officers and demonstrators clashed in the city’s upscale Fairfax district, Mr. Garcetti reversed course. He announced an overnight curfew.

Mr. Newsom declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles County.

And as the sun rose Sunday, for the first time since 1992, National Guard troops patrolled Los Angeles’s streets.

The Los Angeles Times reported that for many black Angelenos, the current moment bears similarities to that era. But as one resident told the paper: “It’s worse today than it was back then.”

Protests in the Bay Area

In Oakland, the legacy of Oscar Grant III loomed large over the weekend’s unrest.

When Mr. Grant was killed by a transit officer at the Fruitvale BART station on New Year’s Day in 2009, the outrage that followed has been widely cited as a kind of antecedent to the Black Lives Matter movement.

NBC Bay Area reported that Mr. Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, spoke about the compounding trauma for black Americans: “We’re fighting the pandemic and we’re fighting this issue of hate,” she said.

As The San Francisco Chronicle reported, the pain inflicted by the pandemic was just one of several reasons this week’s protests have been more “explosive” in the Bay Area.

On Friday, during protests, two officers were shot while protecting Oakland’s federal courthouse — one fatally. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, called the shooting an act of domestic terrorism.

Violence and looting — the latter rising especially on Sunday — erupted in other Bay Area cities, like San Jose, Walnut Creek and Danville, which The Mercury News reported implemented curfews.

[Read more about how those protesting police use of force have been met with more force.]

Protests in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire

While demonstrations had some tense moments, protests in the Central Valley and Inland Empire largely remained calm, according to The Fresno Bee and The Press-Enterprise.

There were, however exceptions: In at least two instances, passing drivers appeared to target protesters.

In Bakersfield — the seat of Kern County, where The Guardian once reported the police killed more people per capita than anywhere else in the country — a 31-year-old man was arrested after the authorities say he drove through a crowd of protesters and struck a 15-year-old girl, according to KGET.

In Visalia, officials were investigating an incident on Saturday in which a person driving a blue Jeep flying flags supportive of President Trump struck two Black Lives Matter protesters, according to The Visalia Times Delta.

[Many leaders and others are claiming extremists and outside agitators are sparking protest violence. But which extremists?]

Protests around San Diego

In La Mesa, a small city in San Diego County, a crowd that had gathered in what started out as a peaceful protest on Saturday eventually blocked Interstate 8, set two banks ablaze and damaged City Hall, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Protesters said they were gathering in solidarity with those in Minneapolis, but they also aimed to draw attention to what they said was the unfair detention last week of a black man by a white officer at a transit station in an encounter that was captured on video.

Protests in Sacramento

And in the state’s capital, what started as peaceful demonstrations on Friday, Saturday and Sunday deteriorated into chaos, according to The Sacramento Bee. Police officers shot rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters; looters left behind a trail of destruction in the heart of the city.

Mr. Floyd’s death touched a particular nerve there, according to CapRadio, following the death of Stephon Clark, an unarmed young black man who was gunned down in his grandmother’s backyard in 2018 when the police mistook a cellphone he was holding for a gun.

The fury over his death was a driving force behind the state’s passage last year of landmark legislation that makes it easier to prosecute police officers who kill people on the job by raising the standard for the use of deadly force.

[Read more about the death of Stephon Clark, and the law he inspired.]

Supporters of the measure have said it makes California’s police use-of-force laws some of the strictest in the nation.

Still, the officers who shot Mr. Clark were never charged in his death.

[Find all of The Times’s coverage of the protests here.]

Here’s what else you may have missed

We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times coverage, but we also encourage you to support local news if you can.

• In the midst of everything, Elon Musk’s Hawthorne-based SpaceX sent a rocket with two astronauts into space. Their spacecraft docked at the International Space Station a little less than a day after launch. [The New York Times]

• The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Chula Vista church’s challenge to shutdown orders restricting public gatherings. [The New York Times]

Here’s what to know about California’s reopening process.

And Finally …