NEW YORK, United States - The state of New York on Friday adopted a series of laws designed to put an end to police brutality against the African-American community, a sign of the impact that nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd are having.
Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo officially signed 10 laws that the two houses of the state legislature passed earlier in the week.
Among the measures is a law forbidding chokeholds being used by law enforcement officers that was named in memory of Eric Garner, a black man suffocated by New York police in 2014.
The state also repealed legislation that designated as "confidential" any document pertaining to professional evaluations of police officers, including records of disciplinary proceedings.
In the future, the public, including members of the media, will be able to access such records through freedom of information requests, without requiring a court order.
After Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 25, the city police department revealed that Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed him by kneeling on his neck for nearly 9 minutes, had been the subject of 18 abuse complaints in his 20 years on the job.
The details of the complaints have not been revealed.
Floyd's death sparked widespread protests across the United States.
Cuomo also announced on Friday he would be signing an executive order obliging the state's almost 500 police departments to "develop a plan that reinvents and modernizes police strategies and programs in their community."
The measures address some of the key issues raised in the massive protests across the country, such as racial inequality, the excessive use of force by police, and transparency in the process of filing complaints against officers.
Any of the departments that have not adopted their new plan by April 2021 will lose their state funding, Cuomo said at a press conference, flanked by Democratic leaders of the state assembly and civil rights activist Al Sharpton.
"These bills mean some substantive change, so that we won't be sitting here going over this after the next situation," said Sharpton.
He said the threat of withholding funding from police departments that fail to implement change "is a model for where we ought to be, dealing with 21st century civil rights in this country."
Agence France-Presse
HOUSTON - George Floyd's hometown of Houston held a memorial march for him on Tuesday, where attendees recounted a "gentle giant" whose legacy had helped the city largely avoid the violent protests seen elsewhere in the United States.
The mayor's office said 60,000 people gathered downtown to honor Floyd, who died after a white police officer pinned his neck under a knee for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis on May 25.. Floyd's death has ignited protests across the country.
Floyd lived most of his 46 years in Houston's historically black Third Ward neighborhood, located about a mile south of the park where the march began. He moved to Minneapolis in recent years for work.
The memorial march was organized by well-known Houston rappers Trae Tha Truth, who was a longtime friend of Floyd's - and Bun B, who worked directly with Floyd's family for the event. Houston's mayor and police chief attended.
"We're gonna represent him right," Trae Tha Truth, whose given name is Frazier Thompson III, told the crowd of several hundred people gathered for the march. "We are gonna tear the system from the inside out."
He added: "George Floyd is looking down at us now and he's smiling."
After a prayer, the marchers exited the park and began to walk toward City Hall.
Democratic US Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents portions of Houston where Floyd was raised, told the crowd that she would introduce police reform legislation in Congress on Thursday in honor of Floyd.
Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is black, said he understood marchers' pain and told them they were making an impact.
"People that are in elected office and positions of power - we are listening," Turner said. "It's important for us to not just listen, but to do. I want you to know your marching, your protesting has not gone in vain. George did not die in vain."
Houston has so far largely escaped the violent protests, with some attributing that directly to the legacy of Floyd himself.
"The people who knew George the best help set the tone for Houston. They knew what he was about. He truly was a gentle giant, a sweet guy," said David Hill, a Houston community activist and pastor at Restoration Community Church, who knows the Floyd family.
-reuters-
SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees on Tuesday that he stood by his decision not to challenge inflammatory posts by US President Donald Trump, refusing to give ground a day after staff members staged a rare public protest.
A group of Facebook employees - nearly all of them working at home due to the coronavirus pandemic - walked off the job on Monday. They complained the company should have acted against Trump's posts containing the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."
Zuckerberg told employees on a video chat that Facebook had conducted a thorough review and was right to leave the posts unchallenged, a company spokeswoman said.
She said Zuckerberg also acknowledged the decision had upset many employees and said the company was looking into "non-binary" options beyond either leaving up such posts or taking them down.
One Facebook employee, who tweeted criticism on Monday, posted again on Twitter during the all-hands meeting to express disappointment.
"It's crystal clear today that leadership refuses to stand with us," Facebook employee Brandon Dail wrote on Twitter. Dail's LinkedIn profile describes him as a user interface engineer at Facebook in Seattle.
On Friday, Twitter Inc affixed a warning label to a Trump tweet about widespread protests over the death of a black man in Minnesota that included the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."
Twitter said the post violated its rules against glorifying violence but was left up as a public interest exception, with reduced options for interactions and distribution.
Facebook declined to act on the same message, and Zuckerberg sought to distance his company from the fight between the president and Twitter. He maintained that while he found Trump's remarks "deeply offensive," they did not violate company policy against incitements to violence.
Twitter last week also put a fact-checking label on two Trump tweets containing misleading claims about mail-in ballots. Facebook, which exempts politicians' posts from its program with third-party fact-checkers, took no action on that post.
Timothy Aveni, a junior software engineer on Facebook's team dedicated to fighting misinformation, announced his resignation in protest over that decision.
"Mark always told us that he would draw the line at speech that calls for violence. He showed us on Friday that this was a lie. Facebook will keep moving the goalposts every time Trump escalates, finding excuse after excuse not to act," he wrote in a Facebook post.
Civil rights leaders who attended an hour-long video call on Monday night with Zuckerberg and other top Facebook executives called the CEO's defense of the hands-off approach to Trump's "incomprehensible."
"He did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump's call for violence against protesters," said a joint statement from leaders of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Color of Change.
Some critics posted calls on Twitter for Facebook's independent oversight board to weigh in. But the board will not review any cases until early fall, and users initially will only be able to appeal to the board about removed content, not content that Facebook has decided to leave untouched. The board, which can overrule Zuckerberg, will only review a small slice of content decisions.
Zuckerberg spoke with Trump on Friday, as first reported by news website Axios.
-reuters-
WASHINGTON/MINNEAPOLIS - At least five US police were hit by gunfire during violent protests over the death of a black man in police custody, police and media said, hours after President Donald Trump vowed to use the military to halt the unrest.
Trump deepened outrage on Monday by posing at a church clutching a bible after law enforcement officers used teargas and rubber bullets to clear the way for him to walk there after he made his remarks in the White House Rose Garden.
Demonstrators set fire to a strip mall in Los Angeles, looted stores in New York City and clashed with police in St Louis, Missouri, where four officers were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
"Officers are still taking gunfire downtown & we will share more info as it (becomes) available," St Louis Police said on Twitter.
A police officer was also shot during protests in the Las Vegas Strip area, AP news agency said, quoting police. Another officer was "involved in a shooting" in the same area, the agency said without giving details.
It did not give details of the shootings or the officers' condition. Police declined to comment to Reuters.
Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak said in a tweet his office had been notified of two separate incidents in Las Vegas. "The State is in contact with local law enforcement and continues to monitor the situation," he said.
Trump has condemned the killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American who died after a white policeman pinned his neck under a knee for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis on May 25, and has promised justice.
But, with anti-police brutality marches and rallies having turned violent after dark each day in the past week, he said rightful protests could not be drowned out by an "angry mob".
"Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled," Trump said. "If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them."
Floyd's death has reignited simmering racial tensions in a politically divided country that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, with African Americans accounting for a disproportionately high number of cases.
CRITICISM OF CHURCH VISIT
Following his address, Trump walked through an area that had been cleared by police to nearby St. John's Episcopal Church, where he posed for pictures with his daughter, Ivanka, and US Attorney General William Barr.
The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church diocese in Washington DC, Michael Curry, was among those who criticized Trump's use of the historic church for a photo opportunity.
"In so doing, he used a church building and the Holy Bible for partisan political purposes," he said on Twitter. The church suffered minor fire damage during protests on Monday night.
The White House said it was clearing the area before a curfew.
A few hours later, thousands of people marched through Brooklyn, shouting "Justice now!" while some passing drivers honked in support.
Television images showed crowds smashing windows and looting luxury stores along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan before the city's 11 p.m. curfew. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the curfew would be moved to 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
Two police officers were struck by a car at a demonstration in Buffalo, New York, on Monday night. Officials said the driver and passengers were believed to be in custody. It was not clear whether the incident was intentional.
In Hollywood, dozens of people were shown in television images looting a drug store. Windows were shattered at a nearby Starbucks and two restaurants.
AUTOPSIES
A second autopsy ordered by Floyd's family and released on Monday found his death was homicide by "mechanical asphyxiation," or physical force that interfered with his oxygen supply. The report says three officers contributed to his death.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner later released autopsy findings that also called Floyd's death homicide by asphyxiation. The county report said Floyd suffered cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained by police and that he had arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease, fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use.
Derek Chauvin, the 44-year-old Minneapolis police officer who kneeled on Floyd, was arrested on third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges. Three other officers involved in the arrest have not been charged.
Floyd's death was the latest case of police brutality against black men that was caught on videotape and prompted an outcry over racism in US law enforcement.
Dozens of cities are under curfews not seen since riots after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The National Guard deployed in 23 states and Washington, D.C.
Most Americans were just emerging from weeks of strict "stay-at-home" orders imposed over the pandemic.
-reuters-
NEW YORK - Thousands of protesters stormed the perimeter of Barclays Center in New York as protests spread across the United States over the killing of George Floyd, a Minneapolis black man who died after being pinned by the neck under a white police officer's knee.
Police made scores of arrests at Friday's massive demonstration in Brooklyn, loading cuffed protesters onto city buses lined up on Atlantic Avenue, shutting down a major thoroughfare.
A diverse group of protesters cheered to hip-hop music and tried to argue about police brutality with police officers in riot gear, who occasionally lunged into crowds to pluck people out for arrest after bottles and other projectiles were thrown.
The demonstrators at the "We can't breathe" vigil and rally in lower Manhattan were pressing for legislation outlawing the police "chokehold" used by a city police officer in the 2014 death of Eric Garner, who was also black.
ATLANTA
In an impassioned speech, Bernice King, the youngest daughter of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., implored people to go home after more than 1,000 protesters marched to the state capitol from the Centennial Olympic Park, blocking traffic and an interstate highway along the way.
"The only way we get what we really want is through non-violence," Bernice King said in her father's hometown. "Let's do this the non-violent way to deal with the evil of our time."
King was assassinated in 1968, a year after race riots spread across many big cities.
The Atlanta demonstration turned chaotic and at times violent. Fires were burning in downtown Atlanta near the CNN Center, the network's headquarters.
At least one police car was among several vehicles burnt. Windows were smashed at the CNN building, along with store fronts. Police pushed back the crowd, but they hurled bottles at officers.
DETROIT
Hundreds in the automotive capital joined a "March Against Police Brutality" late in the afternoon outside the Detroit Public Safety Headquarters.
Many chanted, "No justice, no peace." Some carried signs that read, "End police brutality" and "I won't stop yelling until everyone can breathe."
DENVER
Denver saw a second day of protests after hundreds marched peacefully through its downtown demanding justice for Floyd.
On Thursday night, Denver police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds after parked cars were vandalized. There were 13 arrests related to the protests.
HOUSTON
Hundreds gathered on Friday in a protest organized by the group Black Lives Matter at City Hall. The crowd spilled onto Interstate 45's entrance ramp near downtown chanting, "I can't breathe," and "No justice, no peace."
LOUISVILLE
After a night of violence in which at least 7 people were shot, police in the Kentucky city braced for more protests over the killing of Floyd and several others, such as Breonna Taylor, shot by police in her Louisville home in March.
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