MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Governors in several states called in National Guard troops as protests over repeated police killings of black men grew Saturday from New York to Tulsa to Los Angeles, where police fired rubber bullets to scatter crowds and at least one police car burned.
By AARON MORRISON and SEAN MURPHY
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Governors in several states called in National Guard troops as protests over repeated police killings of black men grew Saturday from New York to Tulsa to Los Angeles, where police fired rubber bullets to scatter crowds and at least one police car burned.
The protests, which began in Minneapolis following Monday’s death of George Floyd after a police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, have left parts of that city a grid of broken windows, burned-out buildings and ransacked stores. But the demonstrations have since become a national phenomenon, as protesters decry years of deaths at police hands.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, the site of a 1921 massacre of black people that left as many as 300 dead and the city’s thriving black district in ruins, protesters blocked intersections and chanted the name of Terence Crutcher, a black man killed by a police officer in 2016. Other peaceful protests were being held in California, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
In Tulsa and Wilmington, Delaware, protesters made their way onto nearby interstates and shut them down temporarily. In Tallahassee, Florida, a pickup truck drove through a crowd of protesters, sending some running and screaming as the vehicle stopped and started and at one point had a person on its hood, police said, but no serious injuries were reported.
In Columbia, South Carolina, a television reporter for WIS-TV was injured by rocks thrown Saturday amid protests outside the Columbia Police Department. Several hundred people participated in the demonstration, tearing down the American and state flags in front of the police department’s headquarters. They also swarmed a Columbia police car, breaking its windows, The State reported.
In Los Angeles protesters chanted “Black Lives Matter,” some within inches of the face shields of officers. Police used batons to move protesters back and shot rubber bullets to scatter the crowd. One man used a skateboard to attempt to break the windshield of a police SUV. A spray painted police car burned in the streets.
In Minneapolis, 29-year-old Sam Allkija, said at Saturday’s protest that the destruction that has accompanied protests is a sign of the frustration and rage the black community has felt for a long time.
“I don’t condone them,” he said.
