Minneapolis, June 1 (RHC)-- Protests erupted across the United States as people continued to take to the streets over the weekend following the killing of 46-year-old George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. Curfews have been enacted in at least 40 cities, including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago and Seattle. The National Guard was called in to several states as protests mounted.
Protesters in Minneapolis are calling for the arrest of all four officers involved in Floyd’s death. Derek Chauvin was charged Friday with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The three other officers who were fired along with Chauvin have not been charged, even as new video appears to show two of them also kneeling on George Floyd’s body as he laid on the pavement.
On Saturday, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said he’d “fully mobilized” the National Guard for the first time in his state’s history, adding another 1,000 soldiers to the 700 he’d already ordered into the streets of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Throughout the weekend, crowds of protesters were met with wave after wave of tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades.
Governor Walz said over the weekend that he asked Pentagon chief Mark Esper and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to help gather “signal intelligence” on protesters. On Friday, publicly available flight data showed Customs and Border Protection had diverted one of its Predator drones to circle 20,000 feet above Minneapolis as protesters gathered in the streets below. The drone is normally used to patrol the U.S.-Canadian border far to the north of the Twin Cities.
A viral video posted online shows a phalanx of officers in riot gear following an armored personnel carrier down a residential street in Minneapolis’s Whittier neighborhood after an 8 p.m. curfew went into effect over the weekend.
Officers repeatedly shout at residents to remain inside their homes, before firing crowd control rounds on a group of residents peacefully filming from their front porch.
