The Supreme Court is weighing petitions to reexamine legal immunity that protects officers from being sued in instances of brutal arrests, use of excessive force and the shooting of innocent people in their homes.
The call for reassessment comes during nationwide protests of police brutality, the most recent instance being the death of George Floyd. Floyd died on May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, video of the incident shows.
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George Floyd’s death has given new life to a leftist movement to abolish the police, an idea with broad support among the Minneapolis City Council and the progressive wing of the DFL Party.
Just a day after Floyd’s death, state Rep. Aisha Gomez (DFL-Minneapolis) released a nearly 500-word statement on “why we talk about police abolition.”
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Several institutions plan to cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) in response to the alleged murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died while in police custody on Memorial Day.
University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel informed students last week that the school will no longer contract with the MPD for large events, like football games and concerts, or specialized law enforcement services, such as K-9 explosive detection units.
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Nearly 500 of the active-duty troops brought in to help if needed with the civil unrest in the nation’s capitol have been given orders to leave Washington after a fourth day of largely peaceful protests, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and other officials said Friday.
But a number of other active-duty soldiers remain on alert in the region, prepared to respond if needed.
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Twitter has blocked a Trump campaign video tribute to George Floyd over a copyright claim, in a move that adds to tensions between the social media platform and the U.S. president, one of its most widely followed users.
The company put a label on a video posted by the @TeamTrump account that said, “This media has been disabled in response to a claim by the copyright owner.” The video was still up on President Donald Trump’s YouTube channel and includes pictures of Floyd, whose death sparked widespread protests, at the start.
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And just like that, social distancing is canceled. At least for some.
After submitting to house arrest orders for the past three months in order to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, Americans may have noticed a slight change in the rules this past week. There are no duct-taped outlines on city streets telling unruly mobs protesting the death of George Floyd where to stand. Rioters are not instructed to loot stores in opposite directions on downtown streets in order to avoid contact. Face coverings are optional but certainly useful when attempting to avoid identification by local law enforcement.
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Kanye West has donated $2 million to support the families and legal teams for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
A representative for the rapper confirmed that some of the money donated would fully cover college tuition costs for Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter, Gianna. Floyd died last month after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck for more than eight minutes as he pleaded for air.
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Five Democrat senators knelt during a moment of silence for George Floyd in a caucus meeting on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon.
Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) knelt, which lasted for eight minutes and 46 seconds, The Hill reported. That was the length of time fired Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck before he died. Chauvin faces a second-degree murder charge over the incident.
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Support for abolishing or defunding the police is quickly gaining support among left-wingers.
Prominent liberal figures are increasingly embracing the radical idea amid the nationwide protests and violence following the death of George Floyd.
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Minneapolis agreed Friday to ban chokeholds by police and to require officers to try to stop any other officers they see using improper force, in the first concrete steps to remake the city’s police department since George Floyd’s death.
The changes are part of a stipulation between the city and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, which launched a civil rights investigation this week in response to the death of Floyd. The City Council approved the agreement 12-0.
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DFL lawmakers want the state and federal governments to chip in to help repair the estimated $55 million in damage caused to Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park) and the Legislature’s People of Color and Indigenous Caucus called for “immediate legislative funding for Minneapolis and St. Paul rebuilding efforts” in a joint statement.
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Alabama’s port city removed a statue of a Confederate naval officer early Friday after days of protests over the police killing of George Floyd, with the mayor saying the monument was a “potential distraction” to focusing on the city’s future.
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A class-action lawsuit was filed this week against the leaders of the Minneapolis Police Department, the Minnesota State Patrol, and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety for their “attacks” on journalists during last week’s riots.
“The press is under assault in our City. Over the past week, the Minneapolis Police and the Minnesota State Patrol have tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, shot in the face with rubber bullets, arrested without cause, and threatened journalists at gunpoint, all after these journalists identified themselves and were otherwise clearly engaged in their reporting duties,” states the lawsuit.
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Lawful protest in the American political process isn’t the same as the lawless rioting, looting, and destruction of lives and property that became a threat to the public in the past week.
The death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer May 25 in Minneapolis sparked widespread protests there and across America. Many of the demonstrations, despite the general lockdown and stay-at-home orders still in place during the coronavirus pandemic, have been peaceful.
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Phone data from about 400 activists in Michigan’s capital who protested coronavirus-related government orders was reportedly collected by a progressive advocacy group, but the same group has not collected similar data on George Floyd protesters.
The Committee to Protect Medicare and Affordable Care, under the direction of former Democratic congressional candidate Dr. Rob Davidson, used cell phone data generated by an application called VoteMap to track the movements of the rally’s attendees after they departed from the capital, according to The Detroit News.
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Black leaders in North Dakota’s largest city pleaded for calm Thursday in the face of violent threats to disrupt a gathering in memory of George Floyd and advertised the event as a celebration, not a protest.
The OneFargo event is scheduled Friday afternoon at a downtown Fargo park. Organizers had planned to march from Island Park to City Hall for a sit-in, but have scrapped that idea after social media threats surfaced to burn down the city offices and commit other violent acts.
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A judge set bail at $750,000 apiece Thursday for three fired Minneapolis police officers charged with aiding and abetting in the killing of George Floyd, as a memorial service took place just blocks away.
Tou Thao, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng made their first appearances in Hennepin County District Court as friends, relatives and celebrities gathered to memorialize Floyd at a nearby Bible college.
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The Hennepin County Medical Examiner released a full autopsy Wednesday in the case of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was allegedly murdered by Minneapolis police officers on Memorial Day.
The 20-page report was released with the permission of Floyd’s family and determined that Floyd’s heart stopped while being restrained by officers. A summary of the findings released earlier this week listed the “manner of death” as a homicide, but the coroner’s office said that a manner of death classification is “a statutory function of the medical examiner.”
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Minnesota Republican Party Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan called on Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to resign for their “failed” leadership during last week’s riots.
“Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey have been largely silent, other than a handful of unhelpful tweets and press conferences blaming everyone but themselves. Minneapolis is decimated. Minneapolis is damaged to a level we never could have imagined. The destruction caused this past week will unfortunately live in our memories forever. It’s a dark stain on our state,” Carnahan said in a statement released over the weekend.
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One Minnesota man has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting at police officers during unrest in Minneapolis last week, while two others face federal charges for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails into a suburban government building, according to charges made public Tuesday.
The charges are the latest to stem from unrest following the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes, ignoring Floyd’s cries that he couldn’t breathe.
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A wave of police killings of young black men in 2014 prompted 24 states to quickly pass some type of law enforcement reform, but many declined to address the most glaring issue: police use of force. Six years later, only about a third of states have passed laws on the question.
The issue is at the heart of nationwide protests set off by the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer in Minneapolis pressed a knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes while he pleaded for air.
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Someone is organizing criminals and vandals to loot and destroy cities but the corporate media don’t seem all that interested in getting to the bottom of it. In fact, Democrats and their allies in the press have been actively engaging in misdirection, lamely accusing white supremacists of being behind the mayhem plaguing “peaceful protests.”
A looter who was caught by the police in Santa Monica, California on Sunday was very candid with a local reporter when he was asked about his motive.
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Prosecutors charged a Minneapolis police officer accused of pressing his knee against George Floyd’s neck with a new more serious charge of second-degree murder on Wednesday, and for the first time leveled charges against three other officers at the scene, according to criminal complaints.
The updated criminal complaint against Derek Chauvin says the officer’s actions were a “substantial causal factor” in Floyd’s death.
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Minneapolis Council Member Steve Fletcher said Tuesday that he and his colleagues are looking into “what it would take to disband” the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) and “start fresh.”
In a lengthy statement posted to Twitter, Fletcher said the behavior of Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis President Bob Kroll demonstrates that “the department is irredeemably beyond reform.” Kroll was widely condemned this week after a letter to his fellow officers was leaked to the press. In the letter, Kroll said the officers involved in the death of George Floyd were fired “without due process.”
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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani called on Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to resign for failing to protect his citizens from a week of riots that left portions of his city in ruins.
In a Friday interview with Fox News, Giuliani said “progressive Democrats are incapable of keeping their people safe because they have criminal-friendly policies that are pathetic.”
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A researcher with the Southern Poverty Law Center said he had not seen evidence supporting the theory that white supremacist militia members were responsible for inciting violence at protests against police brutality last week.
“I have not seen any clear evidence that white supremacists or militiamen are masking up and going out to burn and loot,” Howard Graves, a research analyst at the SPLC, told The New York Times for a report published Sunday. The group, which tracks anti-government extremist groups, has been criticized for calling mainstream conservative organizations “hate groups.”
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President Trump faces the greatest challenge of his very eventful life, and also an immense opportunity to silence his detractors. Not since Charles de Gaulle faced a prolonged general strike in France in 1968 has the leader of a large Western democracy faced something so closely approximating an insurrection as the situation President Trump faces now.
Fortunately, as de Gaulle demonstrated, in such circumstances there is almost always overwhelming support for the legitimate government as long as it restores order with no more force than is necessary and in the impartial national interest.
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Former President George W. Bush weighed in Monday on the riots that have torn across the United States, saying that “lasting justice will only come by peace.”
Bush spoke out following the seventh night of destructive riots following the demise of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, according to footage of the incident.
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George Floyd had fentanyl in his system and had recently used methamphetamine before his death, which was ruled a homicide, according to a county medical examiner autopsy released Monday.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s autopsy report said Floyd experienced “fentanyl intoxication” and “recent methamphetamine use” were “significant conditions” leading to his death. The report ultimately deemed his death a “homicide” due to law enforcement restraint and “neck compression” that contributed to a heart attack.
Read MoreGeorge Floyd’s brother pleaded for peace in the streets Monday, saying destruction is “not going to bring my brother back at all.”
Terrence Floyd’s emotional plea came as the United States braced for another night of violence in response to Floyd’s killing a week ago.
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An Illinois man who allegedly traveled to Minneapolis to participate in riots after the death of George Floyd has been arrested and charged with federal counts, after prosecutors say videos posted to his Facebook page showed him handing out explosives and damaging property.
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Gov. Tim Walz and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights announced Tuesday that the state will begin a civil rights investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department after one of its officers was charged with murder in the death of George Floyd.
The state agency has also filed a human rights complaint against the police department in relation to Floyd’s death.
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Joe Biden mounted one of his most aggressive attacks against President Donald Trump on Tuesday, deriding the commander in chief’s disregard of core constitutional values and blistering him for being “more interested in power, than in principle.”
“He thinks division helps him,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said in a speech at Philadelphia’s City Hall. “This narcissism has become more important than the nation’s wellbeing.”
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Minneapolis Council Member Jeremiah Ellison, the son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, “officially” declared his support for Antifa Sunday.
Ellison’s declaration of support for the extremist group came in response to President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States would be declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist organization.
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The news media wants to ignore the depth of the violence and the forces causing the violence and simply rerun their permanent refrain that this is all about racism (see the Washington Post story that “Racial inequality in Minneapolis is Among the Worst in the Nation” as an example).
The news media will resist deeply the idea that Antifa is a factor and that the violence is designed to hurt America.
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Kansas City police officers found bricks and rocks staged near protest sites around the city, stoking concerns that individuals or groups had pre-planned looting and destruction that hit the city over the weekend, the department said Sunday.
“We have learned of & discovered stashes of bricks and rocks in & around the Plaza and Westport to be used during a riot,” the department said in a tweet on Sunday.
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Minnesota House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler (DFL-Golden Valley) falsely claimed that the truck driver at the center of Sunday’s frightening incident on I-35W was a “white supremacist.”
State officials said the driver, who has been identified as 35-year-old Bogdan Vechirko, might not have realized that the interstates had been shut down in an effort to quell unrest in the Twin Cities. Vechirko was arrested on suspicion of assault and remains jailed, but Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said Monday that he didn’t seem to be acting intentionally.
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As of Monday afternoon, the “majority” of those arrested in the Twin Cities for rioting, violating curfew, looting or other similar charges had Minnesota addresses.
“That would be accurate,” Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington confirmed during a Monday press conference. During a previous briefing, he said he didn’t “have any credible evidence of any specific group being here in Minnesota.”
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U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in a Sunday statement that the regional Joint Terrorism Task Forces of the FBI have been directed to locate and apprehend Antifa leaders.
His statement was issued after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would be declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist organization for its alleged involvement in the terrorizing of major cities after the death of George Floyd.
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The veteran Minneapolis police officer charged in the death of a man in his custody had 18 previous complaints of misconduct against him, according to news reports.
Only two of the old complaints against Derek Chauvin resulted in disciplinary actions, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said during an interview Sunday morning that he believes African-Americans in Minneapolis have reason to distrust and fear their local police.
“Sadly, yes. There is a history that has been repeated time and time again. I want to say that many officers are great people. I know so many of them and I think the chief is an extraordinary person, and the mayor and the council deserve a lot of credit for appointing Mr. Arradondo, but it is an endemic problem in the Minneapolis Police Department,” Ellison said on Fox News Sunday.
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President Donald Trump announced that the United States will designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization.
“The United States of America will be designating Antifa as a Terrorist Organization,” the president wrote on Twitter Sunday morning, acting on an idea long called for by conservative lawmakers. The president said in 2019 that he was considering labeling Antifa a terrorist organization, but didn’t take any further action.
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Two people, including a federal security contractor, were killed Friday night during protests over the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who was killed in police custody earlier this week, according to police and the FBI.
The FBI is investigating the fatal shooting of a Federal Protective Services officer outside of the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland on Friday, reported the San Francisco Gate.
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MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota – More than 200 businesses across the Twin Cities have been vandalized, looted, or burned in response to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who was allegedly murdered Monday night by a Minneapolis police officer.
After setting fire to the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct Thursday night, rioters made their way to the Fifth Precinct Friday, reducing a nearby Wells Fargo and U.S. Post Office to rubble.
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Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is in custody and has been charged with 3rd-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced Friday.
“We are in the process of continuing to review the evidence. There may be subsequent charges later,” Freeman said at a news conference.
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The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis is a complete outrage.
The complete failure of Minneapolis officials to stop and prevent the ensuing riot is a second outrage.
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MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota – Three consecutive nights of rioting in response to the alleged murder of an unarmed black man at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer have left stretches of the city in ruins, producing scenes most accurately described as a war zone.
Officer Derek Chauvin, the man filmed pressing his knee into the neck of a handcuffed George Floyd, was arrested Friday on charges of murder and manslaughter. He and three colleagues involved in the incident were fired from the Minneapolis Police Department Tuesday.
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Target Corporation announced Thursday that it will temporarily close 24 stores throughout the Metro area in the wake of mass looting and rioting in Minneapolis.
Wednesday night’s riots in response to the death of George Floyd left one Target store in south Minneapolis completely demolished.
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said he thinks George Floyd was murdered and claimed Floyd “would be alive today if he were white.”
Video from the tragic Monday night incident shows a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee into the neck of a handcuffed Floyd, who repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. Floyd was pronounced dead shortly after he was taken into custody.
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Two members of the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners asked the county attorney Thursday to “immediately arrest and press charges against the officers involved in the murder of George Floyd.”
All four officers involved in the tragic Monday night incident have been fired from the Minneapolis Police Department, including Derek Chauvin, the officer who was recorded pressing his knee into the neck of a handcuffed Floyd.
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