Minnesota has seen violent protests for days after the death of a black man in police hands. The governor now declared an emergency and activated the national guard.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has mobilized the National Guard because of ongoing riots following the death of a black man in police custody. In doing so, he reacted to riots and looting, which also affected the capital of the US state with St. Paul. The order did not indicate how many National Guardsmen should be deployed and when.
Entire streets in Minneapolis – the scene of the brutal arrest of African American George Floyd – looked like a battlefield. In the evening there was another protest rally in the center of the big city.
Violent arrest recorded on cell phone video
Minneapolis had been rioting since Tuesday. This was triggered by Floyd’s death, which police officers arrested on Monday after an emergency call for a suspected attempted payment with a counterfeit bill in front of a supermarket. A cell phone video of a passer-by, often shared on the Internet, shows a white policeman pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost eight minutes. Again and again the man tied to the ground groans that he cannot breathe and is in pain.
The officials involved ignore loud protests from onlookers about the procedure. At some point Floyd is passed out and medics take him to a clinic, where he later dies. He was 46 years old. The police had initially said that Floyd had opposed the arrest. When he was handcuffed, the officers noticed that he appeared to be in a medical emergency.
Activists: Another example of police violence
After the public outcry over the scenes of Floyd’s arrest, the officer and his three colleagues were fired. The Minneapolis police opened an internal investigation and Mayor Jacob Frey requested criminal proceedings against the policeman. Meanwhile, the FBI is also investigating Floyd’s possible violation of civil rights.
Activists spoke of a new example of ongoing police violence against black men. The protests in Minneapolis after Floyd’s death escalated on Thursday night. Protesters fought street battles with security forces who fired rubber bullets and tear gas. Fires blazed. In the midst of the violence, officers found a man with a gunshot wound near a pawnshop. He was later pronounced dead in a clinic, police spokesman John Elder said. He did not rule out that the man might have been shot by the shopkeeper
