Tag Archives: George Floyd

After George Floyd’s death, a groundswell of religious activism

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – George Floyd’s death has triggered a groundswell of outrage and activism by religious leaders and faith-based groups across the United States, reminiscent of what occurred during the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Conservative and mainstream religious leaders are joining with Black churches, progressive Catholics and Protestants, Jewish synagogues and other faith groups in calling for police reforms and efforts to dismantle racism.

Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25. The officer has been fired and charged with second-degree murder, but protesters and activists around the world are pushing for deeper change.

“We’re seeing it at the grassroots level. We’re seeing rabbis walking alongside Muslim leaders, walking alongside Catholic priests and religious sisters,” said Johnny Zokovitch, executive director of Pax Christi USA, a national Catholic peace and justice group. “We are seeing that race cuts across all religious denominations.”

More than 1,000 rabbis, pastors, imams and other religious leaders held an online conference last week to brainstorm ways to address systemic violence against African Americans.

There is a new “breadth and depth” in the faith-based response, said one participant, Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, citing a great hunger for connection after months of social distancing and lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Folks are just so angry. They’re angry about enduring racism, they’re angry about the incompetent response to COVID, they’re angry about bigotry and racism, about anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and white supremacy,” he said.

Progressive religious groups had an important role in shaping the emerging movement, much as they did in the civil rights movement, but today’s actions are attracting a more diverse set of participants, Pesner said.

ELECTION ISSUE

Republican Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election with strong support from evangelical Christians and Catholics. But Floyd’s death and Trump’s criticism of protesters may be a factor when members of those religious groups go to the polls in November.

While federal tax rules prevent houses of worship from taking an overt partisan stance, clergy are not banned from expressing their personal opinions.

Trump was sharply criticized by mainstream Catholic and Episcopal leaders after protesters were forcibly cleared for a staged photo of him last week in front of Washington’s historic St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House.

Some right-leaning religious leaders have since called him out or joined protests, unlike in the 1960s when some white evangelical leaders, including the Rev. Billy Graham, did not take part in the civil rights movement.

Televangelist Pat Robertson chided the president last week for threatening to send in military troops if governors did not quell violent protests. “He spoke of them as being jerks. You just don’t do that, Mr. President. It isn’t cool!”

Joel Osteen, the senior pastor from Texas megachurch Lakewood, marched with protesters last week in Houston. “We need to stand against injustice and stand with our Black brothers and sisters,” said Osteen.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a Mormon, joined hundreds of Christian evangelicals at a march in Washington on Sunday, and tweeted out “Black Lives Matter.”

Some churches have also stepped up efforts to boost voter registration in recent weeks, much as churches did in the 1960s.

Data collected after Floyd’s death from the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute showed 37% of white Catholics held favorable views of Trump, down from 49% in 2019, and a drop from the 60% who voted for Trump in 2016.

POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN

Religious leaders held an online eulogy for Floyd and interfaith service on Sunday, staged a day of fasting on Monday, and observed eight minutes and 46 seconds of silence to mark the exact amount of time Floyd was held down as he pleaded: “Please, I can’t breathe.”

A June 20 online “assembly” including 16 religious denominations seeks to revive the “Poor People’s Campaign” launched after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Subtitled “A National Call for Moral Revival,” it will also focus on Floyd, organizers say.

“We are in a deep moral crisis,” said the Rev. William Barber, pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, who is one of the key organizers.

“What we have to do at this moment is not only address what happened to George Floyd, but the interlocking problems of systemic racism, police brutality, the lack of healthcare, poverty and militarism,” he said.

Najuma Smith-Pollard, a Black pastor and community activist in Los Angeles, said the protests had already triggered action that once seemed impossible – the Los Angeles mayor yanked $150 million from the police department’s budget and diverted it to programs for youth jobs, healthcare and trauma recovery.

“I don’t think it’s a blip,” she said. “Too many things are at stake and too many people are engaged. This is no longer a local matter – it’s national, it’s global.”

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Democratic lawmakers unveil sweeping bill on race, police in wake of Floyd death

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats, led by a group of black lawmakers, unveiled sweeping legislation on Monday to combat police violence and racial injustice, two weeks after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody led to widespread protests.

The bill would allow victims of misconduct and their families to seek financial damages against police by limiting the legal doctrine known as qualified immunity. It would also make lynching a federal hate crime.

Democrats hope to bring the legislation to the floor of the House of Representatives before the end of June. But its reception in the Republican-controlled Senate is unclear, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell noncommittal on the need for legislation.

(Reporting by David Morgan, additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)

Floyd’s death spurs ‘Gen Z’ activists to set up new D.C. rights group

By Katanga Johnson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Jacqueline LaBayne and Kerrigan Williams met for the very first time in person on Wednesday, at a sit-in they organized in front of the U.S. Capitol over the death of George Floyd.

They have been using social media, which they call a “tool of justice,” to rally a new, ethnically-diverse generation of young activists connecting online to protest Floyd’s May 25 death and push for civil rights reforms in the nation’s capital.

Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

The death, recorded on a bystander’s cellphone, sparked a storm of protests and civil strife, thrusting the highly charged debate over racial justice back to the forefront of the political agenda five months before the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election.

“We spotted each other via a mutual friend’s thread on Twitter immediately following yet another police-executed murder,” said Williams, a 22-year-old black woman who moved to Washington from Houston, Texas and is pursuing graduate studies at Georgetown University.

“Now, we organize together in real life to help other first-time activists get involved in local responses to injustice.”

Within hours of Floyd’s death, they had founded Freedom Fighters DC, which now counts 10,000 Twitter followers, 20,000 Instagram followers, and brought hundreds of demonstrators to Washington in recent days, most of them “Generation Z-ers,” some of about 70 million Americans born after the mid-1990s.

“White allies need to become accomplices in the fight against racism toward black people,” said LaBayne, a 23-year-old white graduate student at Florida State University.

“Embracing this cause is the only way to have a meaningful impact in 2020 – the only way justice is served.”

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Washington and other U.S. cities since Floyd’s death to demand an end to racism and brutality by U.S. law enforcement and push for justice in the Floyd case.

Derek Chauvin, the white officer who was seen with his knee on Floyd’s neck, has been arrested and charged with second-degree and third-degree murder as well as third-degree manslaughter. Three other officers who were involved in the incident were charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and manslaughter. All four have been fired.

‘A CRY FOR JUSTICE’

Williams and LaBayne spent much of the week scrambling to take care of details mundane and profound ahead of the sit-in on Wednesday and a march from a U.S. Senate office building to Lafayette Park in front of the White House.

LaBayne solicited T-shirt donations for volunteers and fielded requests for media interviews. Williams got advice from the group’s five other board members on an intended route for Saturday’s march and reminded attendees to wear comfortable shoes.

“Sometimes we argue over priorities. Sometimes we make compromises. But in the end, we keep the main thing the main thing – a cry for justice for all brothers and sisters,” added LaBayne, who plans to become a civil rights lawyer.

Wednesday’s sit-in attracted a diverse group of about 500 protesters who sat in front of a line of police officers. One volunteer successfully convinced a white officer to kneel with her, drawing cheers from the protesters. Others passed out information on jail assistance for those who are arrested and promoted voter registration.

More than 2,000 people showed up for the Freedom Fighters’ march on Saturday, many of them first-time activists.

“Americans of different races saw the video of (Floyd’s) death on social media,” Williams said. “They also see our lives as regular people and were attracted to the cause. Like-minded, progressive people will always see themselves as stronger in large, diverse numbers. It makes the message of justice more compelling.”

LaBayne and Williams say they hope their efforts lead to substantial reforms, including de-funding Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and an ending its contract with the District of Columbia’s Public Schools system.

“We do not seek to silence the wave of support by other movements for black lives, but we see an immediate need to use this as a springboard to specifically highlight the injustices of Washington natives,” LaBayne.

“This is the focus of Freedom Fighters DC beyond this current moment,” LaBayne said. “I just want people to take away that change is on the way, and we are here to usher it in.”

(Editing by Heather Timmons and Paul Simao)

Minneapolis city council pledges to disband police

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Minneapolis city council members pledged to abolish the police force whose officer knelt on the neck of a dying George Floyd, as the biggest civil rights protests in more than 50 years demanded a transformation of U.S. criminal justice.

Demonstrations have swept a country slowly emerging from the coronavirus lockdown in the two weeks since Floyd, an unarmed black man, 46, died after choking out the words “I can’t breathe” under the knee of a white police officer.

Trump said on Twitter he ordered the National Guard to start withdrawing from Washington D.C. “now that everything is under perfect control”.

Though there was violence in the early days, the protests have lately been overwhelmingly peaceful. They have deepened a political crisis for President Donald Trump, who repeatedly threatened to order active-duty troops onto the streets.

Huge weekend crowds gathered across the country and in Europe. The high-spirited atmosphere was marred late on Sunday when a man drove a car into a rally in Seattle and then shot and wounded a demonstrator who confronted him.

“I have cops in my family, I do believe in a police presence,” said Nikky Williams, a black Air Force veteran who marched in Washington on Sunday. “But I do think that reform has got to happen.”

The prospect that Minneapolis could abolish its police force altogether would have seemed unthinkable just two weeks ago. Nine members of the 13-person city council pledged on Sunday to do away with the police department in favor of a community-led safety model, though they provided little detail.

“A veto-proof majority of the MPLS City Council just publicly agreed that the Minneapolis Police Department is not reformable and that we’re going to end the current policing system,” Alondra Cano, a member of the Minneapolis council, said on Twitter.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters he would shift some funds out of the city’s vast police budget and reallocate it to youth and social services. He said he would take enforcement of rules on street vending out of the hands of police, accused of using the regulations to harass minorities.

Curfews were removed in New York and other major cities including Philadelphia and Chicago.

 

In the nation’s capital, a large and diverse gathering of protesters had packed streets near the White House, chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” and “I can’t breathe.”

A newly-erected fence around the White House was decorated by protesters with signs, including some that read: “Black Lives Matter” and “No Justice, No Peace.”

The “Black Lives Matter” protest slogan was also embraced on Sunday by Trump’s predecessor as Republican candidate for president, Senator Mitt Romney, who marched alongside evangelical Christians in Washington.

Romney told the Washington Post that he wanted to find “a way to end violence and brutality, and to make sure that people understand that black lives matter”.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama also addressed the protests in a YouTube speech for 2020 high school and college graduates. The demonstrations “speak to decades of inaction over unequal treatment and a failure to reform police practices in the broader criminal justice system,” Obama said.

“You don’t have to accept what was considered normal before,” he told the graduates. “You don’t have to accept the world as it is. You can make it the world as it should be.”

 

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California; Andrea Shalal, Daphne Psaledakis in Washington, and Jonathan Allen and Sinead Carew in New York, and Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas; Writing by Peter Graff, Brad Brooks and Lincoln Feast; Editing by Frank McGurty, Peter Cooney, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Tattersall)

Emboldened protesters march again, demanding police reforms after Floyd killing

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A mounting wave of protests demanding police reform after the killing of a black man in Minneapolis swept across the United States on Sunday, building on the momentum of huge demonstrations across the country the day before.

In response, a majority of city council members in Minneapolis pledged to abolish the police department, though how they would navigate that long, complex undertaking was not yet known.

In some of the largest protests yet seen across the United States, a near-festive tone prevailed over the weekend. Most unfolded with no major violence, in sharp contrast to heated clashes between marchers and police in previous days.

The outpouring of protests followed the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after being pinned by the neck for nine minutes by a white officer’s knee. A bystander’s cellphone captured the scene as Floyd pleaded with the officer, choking out the words “I can’t breathe.”

“I have cops in my family, I do believe in a police presence,” said Nikky Williams, a black Air Force veteran who marched in Washington on Sunday. “But I do think that reform has got to happen.”

The change in the tenor of the demonstrations this weekend may reflect a sense that the demands of protesters for sweeping police reform were resonating in many strata of American society.

Nine members of the 13-person Minneapolis City Council pledged on Sunday to do away with the police department in favor of a community-led safety model, a step that would have seemed unthinkable just two weeks ago.

“A veto-proof majority of the MPLS City Council just publicly agreed that the Minneapolis Police Department is not reformable and that we’re going to end the current policing system,” Alondra Cano, a member of the Minneapolis council, said on Twitter.

Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender told CNN “the idea of having no police department is certainly not in the short term.”

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a series of reforms he said were designed to build trust between city residents and the police department.

De Blasio told reporters he would shift an unspecified amount of money out of the police budget and reallocate it to youth and social services in communities of color.

He said he would also take enforcement of rules on street vending out of the hands of police, who have been accused of using the regulations to harass minority communities.

Curfews were removed in New York and other major cities including Philadelphia and Chicago.

TALKING REFORM

In the nation’s capital, a large and diverse gathering of protesters packed streets near the White House, chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” and “I can’t breathe.”

A newly erected fence around the White House was decorated by protesters with signs, including some that read: “Black Lives Matter” and “No Justice, No Peace.”

Republican Senator Mitt Romney marched alongside evangelical Christians in Washington on Sunday, telling the Washington Post that he wanted to find “a way to end violence and brutality, and to make sure that people understand that black lives matter.”

A common theme of weekend rallies was a determination to transform outrage over Floyd’s death last month into a broader movement seeking far-reaching reforms to the U.S. criminal justice system and its treatment of minorities.

The intensity of protests over the past week began to ebb on Wednesday after prosecutors in Minneapolis arrested all four police officers implicated in Floyd’s death. Derek Chauvin, the officer who kneed Floyd, was charged with second-degree murder.

Demonstrators raise their fists as they take a knee for 8 minutes 46 seconds, the length of time George Floyd was held down with a knee on his neck by a Minneapolis Police officer, during a protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., June 7, 2020. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Still, anger in Minneapolis remained intense. The city’s mayor ran a gauntlet of jeering protesters on Saturday after telling them he opposed their demands for defunding the city police department.

The renewed calls for racial equality are breaking out across the country as the United States reopens after weeks of unprecedented lockdowns for the coronavirus pandemic and just five months before the Nov. 3 presidential election.

U.S. Democrats have largely embraced the activists packing into streets to decry the killings of black men and women by law enforcement, but have so far expressed wariness at protesters’ calls to defund the police.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama said in a YouTube commencement address for 2020 graduates that the protests roiling America right now “speak to decades of inaction over unequal treatment and a failure to reform police practices in the broader criminal justice system.”

For a graphic on Floyd’s death sparks worldwide protests:

 

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California; Andrea Shalal, Daphne Psaledakis in Washington, and Jonathan Allen and Sinead Carew in New York, and Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Frank McGurty, Peter Cooney and Lincoln Feast)

Mexican protesters clash with police over custody death

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexicans protested against police brutality on Thursday in the second-largest city, Guadalajara, calling for authorities to be held accountable for the death in custody of a local man allegedly arrested over not wearing a face mask in public.

Protests have swelled in cities worldwide since the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck in Minneapolis.

Protesters in the historic center of the state capital of Jalisco vandalized buildings, including the palace, and set ablaze several police cars, footage from network Milenio showed. Police were seen using force against protesters.

A media outlet said one of its photographers was kicked out after being mistaken for a protester.

However, the story was ridden with “many lies”, Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro responded in a video message late on Thursday. He denied the man depicted in the video had been held for not using a face mask, but gave no further details.

Alfaro said six police were injured, including one set on fire, with 22 male, and two female, protesters detained. He promised an investigation and condemned the violence, which he described as having been “never before seen”.

Mexico’s deputy minister for human rights requested case files from authorities in Jalisco and Baja California, where there may have been a similar incident in February.

Jalisco has implemented strict measures aimed to curb the spread of the coronavirus; wearing face masks is mandatory.

Although the exact circumstances of the death in Jalisco are not known, footage circulating on social media showed a young man, identified as Giovanni Lopez, being detained by police in early May. Bystanders can be heard saying the police were arresting him for not using a face mask.

Lopez, a construction worker, died in custody, the statement said.

(Reporting by Mexico City Newsroom. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Protests against police violence sweep across small-town America

By Brian Munoz and Mica Rosenberg

ANNA, Illinois/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Before sundown on Thursday around 150 protesters marched down the main street in Anna, Illinois, past Bob’s Tavern, Oasis of Grace Church, Douglas Skating Rink and Casey’s General Store holding homemade signs and chanting “black lives matter.”

Nearly a century ago this southern Illinois town of 4,200 residents expelled most of its African-American residents, according to historians.

The rally was held in solidarity with others protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis with a white policeman’s knee on his neck. Some residents said they were marching as a way to try to move beyond their own community’s past.

Joe Plemon, 73, an elder at the First Evangelical Presbyterian Church, said he had prepared several Bible passages – laments – to read at the protest.

“We have been challenged within my own denomination, and I know this is going on at other churches as well, to say, ‘Let’s not just wink at this, let’s step up, let’s admit the things that we’re ashamed of and let’s confess the places where we’ve sinned.'”

Anna was once known as one of the “sundown towns,” or thousands of American localities where black people were not welcome, according to sociologist and historian James Loewen, who wrote a book about the phenomenon.

While most national attention has been focused on massive demonstrations and violent clashes with police in the United States’ biggest cities like New York and Los Angeles, hundreds of spontaneous demonstrations have popped up in little towns and rural areas across the nation in recent days.

A BuzzFeed reporter based in Missoula, Montana, has gathered a growing thread of local news reports and social media posts showing nearly 250 protests in smaller communities – some with just a few hundred residents – in all 50 states.

Many of them are being held in conservative towns like Anna, which is 90% white and sits in a county where Republican President Donald Trump won 68% of the votes in the 2016 election.

“We can’t put our head in the sand,” Plemon said. “It’s good for us to step up and say we want to be part of the solution.”

One of the mostly young organizers was 18-year-old Jenna Gomez from nearby Cobden, Illinois, who said she is used to seeing Confederate flags displayed by area businesses.

Gomez had thought maybe a handful of people would show up to the event when she and some others started a group chat about it.

“We wanted to show everyone that we are not the past,” she said at the rally over cheers and a call-and-response of “United we stand! United we fall!”

‘REMARKABLE’

About a half-hour north in Carbondale, Illinois, two other young organizers – sisters Adah, 16, and Maat Mays, 18 – came up with the idea of staging a vigil on Sunday in their small town of 25,000 while watching live Instagram feeds of demonstrations in Minneapolis.

“When the protests started in the larger cities, I thought, ‘I am not in a big city but I can still bring awareness and find a way to honor the names of the people who have been killed by the police,'” said Maat Mays.

One state over in Indiana, sociology professor Jared Friesen found it “remarkable” that more than a hundred people gathered on Wednesday in the center of Huntington – population 36,000, 96% white and the hometown of Republican former Vice President Dan Quayle.

“This runs contrary to the ideas that people have about small towns,” Friesen said, “That we are all hicks and we don’t care about what is happening.”

But some in these communities do not back the wave of public action.

Jeff Barnes, a retired housepainter and proud Trump supporter who lives in Anna, said he agreed with the president’s threat to use the military against looters.

“That won’t happen around here, I can assure you,” he said, gesturing to a group of about 20 men who were not visibly armed and said they were there to protect businesses.

The flashes of hostility did not faze seasoned activists like 72-year-old Mildred Henderson.

“Pretty soon the minority will be the majority, and they would not want to be treated the way they have treated some blacks and some other minorities,” she said. “They haven’t thought about the script being flipped. But it’s about to be.”

(Reporting by Brian Munoz in Anna and Carbondale, Illinois, and Mica Rosenberg in New York; editing by Ross Colvin and Jonathan Oatis)

‘Your Pain Is My Pain’: global anti-racism protests rage

FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) – Protesters around the world took to the streets again on Friday, despite coronavirus warnings, in a wave of outrage at the death of African American George Floyd in the United States and racism against minorities in their own nations.

Floyd’s death, after a white police officer pressed a knee into his neck while detaining him, has convulsed the United States.

Rallies in the German cities of Frankfurt and Hamburg drew more than 10,000 people, according to Reuters witnesses, with many lifting hands in the air and holding banners with slogans such as: “Your Pain Is My Pain, Your Fight Is My Fight”.

As authorities in many nations warned of the risk of COVID-19 infections from large gatherings, some participants in Germany wore anti-coronavirus masks with a clenched fist image.

One banner at the Frankfurt rally asked: “How Many Weren’t Filmed?” in reference to the fact that Floyd’s case was caught on camera in Minneapolis.

In London’s Trafalgar Square, dozens took to one knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Placards read: “White People Must Do More” and “Justice for Belly Mujinga” in reference to a rail worker who died of COVID-19 after being spat at by a man who said he was infected.

“There are a lot of uncomfortable conversations that people have been avoiding because it’s unpleasant, it’s not fun, and it can create tension, whether that’s in your family or with your friends or in your workplace,” said law firm worker Ada Offor, 21, in Trafalgar Square.

“But they’re conversations that need to be had if we want to avoid things like this happening in the future, if we want to create reform, if we want to finally create a kind of society where black bodies are treated equally.”

In Australia, demonstrators marched to Parliament House in Canberra, social media images showed, despite attempts by the authorities to stop gatherings due to the coronavirus.

Australians have also been drawing attention to the mistreatment of indigenous nationals.

Police banned a demonstration planned to take place in front of the U.S. Embassy in Paris on Saturday, citing the risks of social disorder and the coronavirus pandemic.

Elsewhere, rallies were scheduled on Friday in the Netherlands, Liberia, Norway, Italy, Austria, Canada and Greece, with more planned for the weekend.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux worldwide; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Video shows police in Buffalo, New York, shoving 75-year-old to ground

By Sharon Bernstein

(Reuters) – Two Buffalo, New York, police officers were suspended without pay on Thursday after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old man to the ground, as protests over the police killing of George Floyd continued into their tenth night.

The video taken by a reporter from local public radio station WBFO and posted on its website and Twitter account shows the white-haired man approaching a line of officers in riot gear. One officer pushes him with a baton and a second one with his hand. The sound of a crack is heard and then blood trickles from the man’s head. The man, who is white, is not identified.

“I was deeply disturbed by the video,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said in a statement. “After days of peaceful protests and several meetings between myself, police leadership and members of the community, tonight’s event is disheartening.”

The incident drew widespread condemnation on social media as protesters returned to the streets of several U.S. cities to demonstrate against police brutality.

Floyd died in Minneapolis on May 25 after former police officer Derek Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest.

The video in Buffalo shows the majority of the officers march past after the man falls, though the officer who pushed him with a baton starts to lean over him before he is motioned away by another officer. Someone is heard calling for a medic.

The radio station reported that two medics came forward and helped the man into an ambulance. Police later said that a man was injured after tripping and falling, the radio station said.

But after viewing the video, Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood ordered an investigation and suspended the two officers, Brown said.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Twitter that he spoke with Mayor Brown and agreed that the officers involved should be suspended, pending a formal investigation.

He wrote,”Police Officers must enforce – NOT ABUSE – the law.”

The 75-year-old victim was in stable but serious condition at Erie County Medical Center Hospital in Buffalo, Brown said.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

Six Atlanta cops face excessive force charges after tasing college students

(Reuters) – Six Atlanta police officers will face charges for an incident in which they tased two college students and removed them from their car during protests over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed African American in police custody.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said on Tuesday he would seek prison sentences of several years for the officers involved in the Saturday encounter with Messiah Young, 22, and his 20-year-old girlfriend, Taniyah Pilgrim.

“The conduct involved in this incident — it is not indicative of the way that we treat people in the city of Atlanta,” Howard told a briefing, which Young and Pilgrim also attended.

Video footage shared at the briefing showed officers stopping the car, relaying orders and firing a taser gun into the vehicle. Pilgrim is then pulled from the car screaming. There is no sign that either resisted or posed any threat.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said on Sunday that she and the city’s police chief had decided to fire two of the officers after reviewing body-camera footage of the incident.

The Atlanta Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the charges, which range from aggravated assault to criminal damage to Pilgrim’s car.

“I feel a little safer now that these monsters are off of the street,” said Young, a senior at Morehouse College, who suffered a fractured wrist during the incident. “Moving forward, we just need to make sure that all officers are held accountable.”

Vince Champion, southeast regional director for the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, said the move to bring charges without a thorough investigation was unfair to the officers, none of whom have been interviewed.

“We believe that this is premature,” Champion said, adding he believed Howard and Bottoms were trying to score political points rather than uncover all the facts. “Why were the students stopped? We don’t know the answer to that.”

 

(Reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by Bernadette Baum)