Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has called for criminal charges to be brought against the white police officer who was seen in cellphone video kneeling for some eight minutes on the neck of a handcuffed, 46-year-old black man who repeatedly cried out that he couldn't breathe and died in police custody. Frey said, "I’ve wrestled with, more than anything else over the last 36 hours, one fundamental question: Why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail?" The officer, Derek Chauvin, and three other police officers who were there with him were fired Tuesday, the day after Floyd's death. Police said Floyd matched the description of someone who tried to pay with a counterfeit bill at a convenience store and that he resisted arrest.
Protesters demonstrated for a second day Wednesday outside a police precinct, with some throwing rocks and bottles at police, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. There was also reported looting at a few nearby stores, with a fire breaking out in one of them. It was the second day of demonstrations, after protesters marched on Tuesday evening more than two miles from the site of the fatal incident to the precinct, with some damaging property. Police also fired tear gas and rubber bullets then.
Some people also showed up outside Chauvin's home Wednesday, where paint was spilled in his driveway and someone wrote "murderer" in chalk. An officer told them Chauvin wasn't there. Hundreds protesting Floyd's death blocked a Los Angeles freeway yesterday and broke windows of California Highway Patrol police cars. An attorney for Floyd's family, Benjamin Crump, urged that protests be peaceful, saying, "We cannot sink to the level of our oppressors."
(Pulse Networks)