Live George Floyd Protest Updates and Video

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Live George Floyd Protest Updates and Video

There were widespread reports of looting and confrontations with the police in cities across the United States. The White House went dark as fires burned outside its gates.

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California ordered all state buildings in “downtown city areas” to be closed on Monday, and Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for Los Angeles County.

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Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Police struggle to rein in lawlessness on a sixth day of unrest.

Fires burned outside the White House, the streets of New York City were gripped by mayhem and stores in Santa Monica, Calif., were looted after another day of peaceful protests descended into lawlessness in major cities across the United States.

It was the sixth day of unrest since the death of George Floyd last week in Minneapolis. The National Guard was deployed to assist overwhelmed police departments, and dozens of mayors extended curfews. The police adjusted their tactics after widespread looting and rioting over the weekend.

As the smoke cleared Monday morning, here is where things stand.

  • In Minneapolis, the epicenter of the demonstrations, about 200 protesters were arrested after trying to march along an interstate after a curfew began at 8 p.m. The arrests capped a relatively quiet night compared with the chaos of the past several days.

  • In California, all state buildings “with offices in downtown city areas” were ordered to close on Monday. There were widespread reports of looting in Santa Monica and Long Beach. One police officer suffered a gunshot wound while on duty in Venice. A news helicopter in Los Angeles recorded a police S.U.V. driving into a group of protesters, knocking two people to the ground.

  • In Birmingham, Ala., protesters started to tear down a Confederate monument that the city had covered with a tarp amid a lawsuit between the state attorney general and the city.

  • In Boston, a police S.U.V. was set ablaze near the State House. As reports of more lawlessness came in overnight, Mayor Marty Walsh said he was angered “by the people who came into our city and chose to engage in acts of destruction and violence.” He added, “If we are to achieve change and if we are to lead the change, our efforts must be rooted in peace and regard for our community.”

  • In Philadelphia, police officers in riot gear and an armored vehicle used pepper spray to repel rioters and looters. A wall of officers blocked an entrance ramp to Interstate 676 in the city, where public transit was suspended starting at 6 p.m. as part of a curfew. In the morning, many business owners were sifting through ransacked stores.

  • In New York, demonstrators marched across the Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges. The Manhattan Bridge was briefly shut down to car traffic. Sporadic looting was reported across Lower Manhattan. The night before in Union Square, the mayor’s daughter, Chiara de Blasio, 25, was among the protesters arrested, according to a police official.

  • In Chicago, the police superintendent, David Brown, excoriated looters on Sunday. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he had called up the National Guard after a request from Mayor Lori Lightfoot. “I want to be clear and emphasize: The Guard is here to support our Police Department,” Ms. Lightfoot said. “They will not be actively involved in policing and patrolling.” Public transit to downtown has been suspended indefinitely.

  • In Portland, Ore., the police clashed with protesters who smashed windows at the federal courthouse. The police deployed tear gas while demonstrators hurled fireworks at officers.

  • In Louisville, Ky., a confrontation on a crowded street was partly defused when a woman stepped forward and offered a police officer in riot gear a hug. They embraced for nearly a minute. There were reports of clashes later in the night, however, and a local news outlet reported that at least one person had been fatally shot.


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Clashes with the police and looting in New York after tens of thousands protest peacefully.

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Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Flames nearly two stories high leapt from trash cans and piles of street debris, sending acrid smoke into the air around Union Square in New York City. Stores in the trendy SoHo neighborhood were targeted for the second night in a row. And across the city, the police clashed with protesters in a city on edge.

More than two months of social distancing and lockdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic ended for many with defiant protests. And in what has become a pattern across the nation, peaceful demonstrations gave way to destruction.

On Sunday night, thousands of demonstrators fanned across the city. One group crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, and another briefly shut down the Manhattan Bridge.

In Union Square, protesters threw bottles and other objects at police officers armed with batons who pushed into crowds on Broadway and nearby side streets.

“You are creating a disturbance,” an officer said over a megaphone as protesters shouted and sirens blared nearby. “If you do not disperse, you will be subject to arrest.”

And all night, sirens screamed across the city, with multiple reports of lootings in Lower Manhattan.

“Unemployment is gasoline, and then abuse of power is the match,” one protester said after looters smashed the windows of a Duane Reade drugstore in Lower Manhattan.

“In the right circumstances, ka-boom. People don’t have anything to lose,” he said. “‘If a guy can get away with murdering a guy, I’m pretty sure I can get away with stealing an iPhone’ is the attitude.”

White House goes dark as fires rage nearby.

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Fires burned in the streets just before a citywide curfew went into effect. Police officers fired tear gas to dissuade protesters. And smoke was seen rising near the Washington Monument.CreditCredit…Alex Brandon/Associated Press

The police fired tear gas and unleashed flash grenades near the White House on Sunday night to disperse protesters who had smashed the windows of prominent buildings, overturned cars and set fires, with smoke seen rising from close to the Washington Monument.

The White House went dark, turning off almost all of its external lights, as protesters seethed outside.

A curfew, intended to last from 11 p.m. until 6 a.m., did little to dissuade the crowds from clashing violently with riot police officers in Lafayette Square, a small park beside the White House. In addition to a car fire, another blaze occurred in the basement of St. John’s Church, known as the “church of presidents,” where every chief executive going back to James Madison has worshiped.

The darkened White House added to an image of a president under siege. On Friday, Secret Service agents rushed President Trump to an underground bunker that has previously been used during terrorist attacks.

Mr. Trump was largely heard on Twitter, but spurned the advice of his campaign advisers to deliver a nationally televised address and remained out of sight on Sunday. He accused Democrats of not being tough enough on violent protesters and blamed radical leftists for the turmoil roiling the nation.

The president also said his administration would “be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,” employing a shorthand for “anti-fascist.” But antifa is a movement of activists who dress in black and call themselves anarchists, not an organization with a clear structure that can be penalized under law. Moreover, U.S. law applies terrorist designations to foreign entities, not domestic groups.

The Times has reporters in dozens of U.S. cities. Here’s some of what they are witnessing.

Jack Healy in Denver

The bearded young man was standing amid a sea of protesters on Colfax Avenue, a long gritty commercial strip in central Denver, when the police opened fire. A less-lethal round designed for crowd control hit the side of his face, and he crumpled to the ground.

He was carried to a liquor store’s parking lot, where he lay grimacing in pain. As other protesters wrapped his head in gauze, blood pooled on the asphalt.

The demonstrators weren’t able to carry him back through the front lines, where protesters were hurling fireworks and police were firing off tear gas, and he couldn’t walk. A dozen people crowded around him, calling for help, shouting suggestions, talking past one another.

“We got to get him out of here!”

“They aren’t going to let us bring an ambulance over here.”

After 15 minutes, an ambulance pulled up and loaded the man inside. Police officers stood beside its doors, yelling at protesters to get away as it receded into the night.

Jack Nicas in Oakland, Calif.

Close to downtown, a few hundred protesters peacefully marched through the streets, chanting and carrying signs.

Behind the diverse crowd, Donavon Butler, 33, drove a minivan with his wife and four children inside. His 5-year-old son, Chase, hung out the back window with his right fist raised and his left hand holding a cardboard sign that said, “Mama! I can’t breathe. Don’t shoot.”

“The world we live in is not equal. People look at us different,” Mr. Butler said he had told his son.

Mike Baker in Seattle

For an hour, hundreds of demonstrators marching through Seattle streets had been stuck at an intersection in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, unable to pass a line of police officers who were telling them to comply with a curfew already three hours old.

The day before, protests had spun into mayhem, with dozens of downtown storefronts smashed and many looted. But on Sunday, protesters moved through streets with little issue, at times kneeling before police blockades to show that the chanting crowds were not there to engage in conflict.

At 8:10 p.m., the officers and a protest leader had an announcement: Things had gone so peacefully that the police were willing to let them back to the epicenter of Saturday’s chaos. The protesters cheered and marched onward.

“See how much easier this is,” one person shouted at the officers.

Rashyla Levitt addressed the crowd through a megaphone, telling them the group had made history. “We marched for justice. We marched for peace,” she said. “We marched for each other. We marched for our streets.”

Others weren’t ready to end the night. They approached a line of officers in riot gear, shouting and cursing. Some protesters — including Elijah Alter, 24 — rushed to intervene, pushing them away from the line of officers.

“Because of our solidarity, we made them change their mind,” he said. “Do not ruin it on a violent end.”

Richard Fausset in Atlanta

The demonstrators stopped — hundreds of them, black and white — and sat. A self-appointed leader among them, an entrepreneur named John Wade, praised them for their nonviolence. But he warned them not to keep marching up the hill. The police were up there fighting it out, he said, with “noncompliant people.”

Organizers told everyone to turn off Centennial Olympic Park Drive and veer away from the trouble. A police officer told them not to walk forward.

Then the tear gas started.

People chanted the way they do at Atlanta ball games, riffing on the song “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye).”

“We ready, we ready, we ready, for y’all,” they sang.

Listen to ‘The Daily’: A Weekend of Pain and Protest

Dispatches from cities across the U.S. being rocked by protests over police brutality after the death of George Floyd.

Officer charged in Floyd’s death is moved to a secure prison while awaiting arraignment.

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Credit…Darnella Frazier, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Derek Chauvin, the fired police officer charged with murdering George Floyd, was transferred on Sunday to Minnesota’s most secure prison, where he is expected to await his arraignment in a 7-by 10-foot concrete cell and be under near constant surveillance.

Mr. Chauvin, a veteran officer of the Minneapolis City Police, was seen on video pressing his knee to Mr. Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest on Memorial Day.

Mr. Floyd’s death has set off a week of protests over police brutality across the country. Mr. Chauvin was charged on Friday with third-degree murder, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 25 years in prison.

Mr. Chauvin is s scheduled to appear in court for a hearing on June 8, according to the Hennepin County website.

Also on Sunday, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, would take the lead in prosecuting Mr. Chauvin.

Minneapolis residents band together to keep the peace.

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Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

At 12:36 a.m. as Monday broke, Andy Horng was clutching a samurai sword outside the Lake & Park corner grocery store, writes Dionne Searcey in Minneapolis.

Across the street, smoke billowed from a Mexican restaurant that had been set aflame during protests on Friday. On Sunday around 10:30 p.m. the building’s basement had somehow reignited.

After several calls to 911 were met with busy signals, he and several others rushed inside to tackle the fire, rigging hoses from the truck of a nearby contractor until the fire department arrived.

“I live next door,” Mr. Horng said of the grocery store, which he and two other men were guarding. “I have to protect it.”

Elsewhere in the city, at 11:22 p.m. three people stood behind their bicycles near a memorial to George Floyd at the site where he died last week. Their aim, they said, was to keep troublemakers away as protesters milled and occasionally chanted nearby.

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‘We’re Sick and Tired’: Voices From Minneapolis Protests

The death of George Floyd at the hands of the police set off days of protests in Minneapolis. Demonstrators challenged a curfew on Saturday and took to the streets for the fifth day in a row. Here’s why.

“We are having peaceful speeches, we have a reverend —” Protesters gathered outside in Minneapolis on Saturday, for the fifth day in a row. This group was demonstrating outside the city’s Fifth Police Precinct. “I can’t stand the fact that some people in our society can’t walk around without feeling scared that a cop is not going to come to them with a death sentence.” Just after 8 p.m., police came out to enforce the city’s curfew. “You are in violation of Minneapolis city curfew ordinance.” They began firing pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the group. [screams] “I swear to God! I swear to [expletive] God —” Protesters here told us why they were out on the streets. “Honestly, the world is watching the United States, and more specifically Minneapolis itself, to see how we’re going to react and get justice for Mr. Floyd. And for me, being out here is a huge thing.” “The Minneapolis Police Department is notorious for their racism here. Black men are about 13 times more likely to be killed by cops than white men in the city. And I think that people just finally had enough.” “They tortured him, right? What else is there to do but get their attention?” Since George Floyd’s death, peaceful protests have mixed with looting and rioting at night. Most protesters we spoke with oppose the violence, but many said they understood the frustration and anger people are feeling. “No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace!” “We are here for justice for George. We’re sick and tired of being abused and oppressed by the police. They’ve been doing that [expletive] for years and years.” “Man, we’ve got to come together as a people, as a one. This racism’s been going on for too long.” “All four hundred years or more.” “Too long.” “All this [expletive] can be replaced. The body cannot be replaced.” “The body can never be replaced.” “I don’t want to see businesses burned down. But, I mean, we’re in kind of a war zone out here. And so, that’s kind of, I think, the least of our worries in a lot of ways.” “Bring him, bring him, bring him one block. Bring him one block to a medic.” “What happened? Someone hit him with a bat?” “You’ve got to calm down. We’re on the same team.” “You’ve got to calm down.” “Calm down — what happened, what happened? We’ve got about 12 medics here. We’re going to do the best we can. We’ve got a combat medic here, OK? But we’ve got to dial it down —” “We’ve got to keep it down.” “— because they’re looking for any reason to kill us.” One protester described the violence that broke out after she confronted a group of rioters in the neighborhood. “There was a group of guys who started screaming at the police, throwing things. I asked them, ‘Who are you? Who are you to come in here and do this?’ They ran up on me with big steel pipes. They got in my face. And one guy came at me, holding the pipe, and he stepped in, and he took it.” “You’re going to be all right —” “What message are we sending by destroying what is ours? How does that, how does that get the message out about how we need change in our city if all we’re doing is destroying it and burning it down?”

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The death of George Floyd at the hands of the police set off days of protests in Minneapolis. Demonstrators challenged a curfew on Saturday and took to the streets for the fifth day in a row. Here’s why.CreditCredit…Mike Shum for The New York Times

A man with a protest sign under his arm approached. “Friend of Floyd’s?” a self-appointed guard asked him. “Yes, yes,” he said, and was allowed to pass. Next, two women came forward. “Are there medics here?” they asked. “By the snack table,” the guard said as he allowed them to pass.

Not long before, near the site where Mr. Floyd died, the smell of lilac bushes was replaced with cigarette smoke near makeshift memorials where protesters mingled. Red stoplights were blinking on each corner of an intersection.

A man grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it as he shooed people from walking on the names of black victims of police misconduct that someone had written in huge chalk letters on the street. Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and a dozen others.

Earlier in the night, at 9:23 p.m. protesters seemed weary at the site where Mr. Floyd died. Several wandered through the crowd with selfie sticks, filming themselves describing what they saw.

As a helicopter circled, a man looked up and yelled, “No justice, no peace!”

Dalfanzo Credit, 31, stood smoking a cigarillo. “It could have been me,” he said.

Who’s behind the violence breaking out at protests?

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Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Amid the rush to assign blame for the violence and vandalism breaking out in U.S. cities, accusations that extremists or other outside agitators are behind the destruction continue to ricochet online and on the airwaves.

Political leaders including President Trump have accused various groups, saying that a radical agenda is transforming once peaceful protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

“We have reason to believe that bad actors continue to infiltrate the rightful protests of George Floyd’s murder, which is why we are extending the curfew by one day,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota tweeted on Sunday, after previously suggesting that white supremacists or people from outside the state were fomenting the unrest.

In New York City, a senior police official said anarchists had planned to cause mayhem in the city even before the protests started, using encrypted communication to raise bail money and recruit medics.

Still, few of those pointing the finger at extremists presented much detailed evidence to support the accusations, and some officials conceded the lack of solid information.

Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general and a former Democratic congressman from Minneapolis, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it would all have to be investigated.

“The truth is, nobody really knows,” he said.

Protests are staged around the world, and U.S. rivals seek to capitalize on the unrest.

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Credit…Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In many parts of the world, the death of yet another black man at the hands of the police in the United States is setting off protests against police brutality and reviving concerns that America is abandoning its traditional role as a defender of human rights.

And for America’s rivals, the tensions have provided an opportunity to deflect attention from their own problems.

In China, the state-run news media heavily featured reports about Mr. Floyd’s death and portrayed the protests as another sign of America’s decline. When a U.S. official on Saturday attacked the ruling Communist Party on Twitter for moving to impose national security legislation to quash dissent in Hong Kong, a spokeswoman for the Chinese government fired back with a popular refrain among protesters in the United States.

“‘I can’t breathe,’ ” the spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, wrote on Twitter.

In Iran, Javad Zarif, the foreign minister, accused America of hypocrisy. He posted a doctored screenshot of a 2018 statement by U.S. officials condemning Iran for corruption and injustice.

In his version, the references to Iran were replaced with America.

“Some don’t think #BlackLivesMatter,” Mr. Zarif wrote on Twitter.

8 minutes and 46 seconds. Here’s how George Floyd died in police custody.

The Times has reconstructed the death of George Floyd on May 25. Security footage, witness videos and official documents show how a series of actions by police officers turned fatal.

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The Times has reconstructed the death of George Floyd on May 25. Security footage, witness videos and official documents show how a series of actions by officers turned fatal. (This video contains scenes of graphic violence.)

Reporting was contributed by John Eligon, Richard Fausset, Tess Felder, Matt Furber, Russell Goldman, Jack Healy, Javier C. Hernández, Neil MacFarquhar, Benjamin Mueller, Jack Nicas, Elian Peltier, Marc Santora and Dionne Searcey.

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