Curfews imposed after protests heat up in several US cities

Civil unrest flared and curfews were imposed in several major US cities at the weekend as demonstrators took to the streets to vent  their outrage at the death of a black man shown on video gasping for breath as a white Minneapolis policeman knelt on his neck.

From Los Angeles to Miami to Chicago, protests marked by chants of “I can’t breathe” — a rallying cry echoing the dying words of George Floyd — began peacefully before turning unruly as demonstrators blocked traffic, set fires and clashed with riot police, some firing teargas and plastic bullets in an effort to restore order.

The sight of protesters flooding streets fuelled a sense of crisis in the US after weeks of lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen millions thrown out of work and has disproportionately affected minority communities.

In the nation’s capital, hundreds of demonstrators assembled near the justice department headquarters shouting, “black lives matter”.

Many later moved to the White House, where they confronted shield-carrying police, some mounted on horseback.

President Donald Trump said on Saturday that if protesters who gathered the night before in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, had breached the fence, “they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen”.

The full Minnesota National Guard was activated for the first time since World War 2 after four nights of arson, looting and vandalism in parts of Minneapolis, the state’s largest city, and its adjacent capital St Paul.

Minnesota governor Tim Walz said the deployment was necessary because outside agitators were using protests over Floyd’s death to sow chaos.

“We are under assault,” Walz said on Saturday. “Order needs to be restored.”

Separately, US attorney-general William Barr also pointed the finger at extremist instigators, though he and Walz — neither offering evidence to support their assertions — suggested opposite ends of the political fringe were to blame.

Civil rights activists said a video of Floyd’s arrest on Monday — captured by an onlooker’s cellphone as he repeatedly groaned, “please, I can’t breathe” before he died — triggered an outpouring of rage long simmering over persistent racial bias in the US criminal justice system.

But the rapidly spreading protests also coincided with a deep-seated national discontent over the social claustrophobia and economic carnage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.

Curfews were imposed in several major cities rocked by civil disturbances in recent days, including Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Denver, Cincinnati, Portland, Oregon, and Louisville, Kentucky.

Protests also flared on Saturday in Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, Salt Lake City and Cleveland.

In an extraordinary move, the Pentagon said it had put military units on a four-hour alert to be ready if requested by the Minnesota governor to help keep the peace.

National Guard units also were mobilised by the governors of Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin and Tennessee.

On Friday it was announced that Derek Chauvin, the policeman seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck, had been arrested on murder charges.

Floyd, who had done security work for Minneapolis nightclubs, had been suspected of trying to pass counterfeit money to buy cigarettes on Monday evening.

Police said he was unarmed. A store employee who had called for help had told a police dispatcher that the suspect appeared to be intoxicated.

Three other officers dismissed on Tuesday from the police department with Chauvin, who was known to have done security work off-duty at one of the same nightclubs as Floyd, are also under criminal investigation in the case, prosecutors said.

Anger stoked by Floyd’s death was widespread.

Thousands flooded Chicago streets for a second day of protests.

Cellphone footage shared later showed an overturned SUV, a patrol car on fire, a person burning the US flag and a skirmish between demonstrators and police.

In the Brooklyn borough of New York City, video footage recorded by onlookers showed a police squad car driving into a crowd of protesters during a second day of violence after more than 200 arrests were made on Friday.

Protesters in Los Angeles clashed with police in the city’s Fairfax district, and 

broke into stores at The Grove shopping centre as well as into shops along the famed Rodeo Drive of wealthy Beverly Hills.

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garnett said: “This is no longer a protest. This is vandalism ... this is destruction. —  Reuters