New York City will in turn be placed under curfew as of Monday, due to riots sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo announced. .
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“I spoke to the governor [de New York] Andrew Cuomo, and, for the safety of all, we have decided to put in place a curfew for New York City tonight: it will go into effect at 11 p.m. and will be lifted at 5 a.m. tweet the mayor of the American economic capital, following in the footsteps of forty other cities that have already taken this measure.
The mayor and the governor, both Democrats, also announced that they would “double the police presence” in the face of the demonstrations which have shaken the first American metropolis since Thursday evening.
Confrontations between demonstrators and police have increased, with cars burnt and, this weekend, looting of stores, especially on the main thoroughfare of Broadway, in Manhattan.
“The protests were generally calm. We cannot let violence undermine the message of this moment, ”said de Blasio, quoted in a statement.
He also promised that the police would be “held accountable” in the event of further police brutality, and that the chief of police would speak about it later in the day.
Governor Cuomo stressed that there were “people who take advantage of this moment for personal profit.”
“The violence and the looting that has taken place are bad for the city, the state and all this movement, undermining and diverting from a just cause,” he insisted.
The announcement comes as new protests began, with around 1,000 people already gathered in Times Square by mid-afternoon Monday, pending further gatherings scheduled for late afternoon in the Brooklyn and Queens districts.
Some protesters, however, immediately declared their intention not to respect the curfew.
“People will not respect him,” Shina Moore, a 23-year-old black woman, who worked in a Starbucks cafe, told AFP.
“Cuomo is our governor, he does a good job, but it’s not his fight […] These protests will last as long as it takes – a day, a week, a month, a year, ”she said.
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