Tag Archives: police violence

Trump says he will sign police reform executive order on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he will sign an executive order on police reform and hold a news conference on Tuesday, after several weeks of nationwide protests sparked by the death of African-American George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis.

In comments to reporters, Trump also said the shooting by police of a black man in Atlanta was a terrible situation and very disturbing.

An Atlanta police officer was fired and the police chief resigned after the killing of Rayshard Brooks on Friday night.

No details on Trump’s executive order on police reform have been released. Democrats and Republicans in Congress are working on separate proposals on the issue.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; writing by Eric Beech; editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)

George Floyd’s brother asks U.S. Congress to ‘stop the pain’ of police killings

By David Morgan and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A brother of George Floyd, whose killing in Minneapolis sparked protests around the world, asked the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to stop the pain of black people caused by police violence.

“I’m here to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain,” a tearful Philonise Floyd, 42, said in testimony before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. “George called for help and he was ignored. Please listen to the call I’m making to you now, to the calls of our family and the calls ringing on the streets of all the world.”

George Floyd’s death on May 25 after a policeman knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes was the latest in a string of killings of African-American men and women by police that have sparked anger on America’s streets and fresh calls for reforms.

“Justice for George,” Philonise Floyd told reporters on his way into the hearing venue.

The Judiciary Committee is preparing to shepherd a sweeping package of legislation, aimed at combating police violence and racial injustice, to the House floor by July 4, and is expected to hold further hearings next week to prepare the bill for a full House vote.

“The nation demands and deserves meaningful change,” Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler said at the start of the hearing in the U.S. Capitol.

“We must remember that he is not just a cause, a name to be chanted in the streets. He was a man. He had a family. He was known as a gentle giant. He had a rich life that was taken from him far too early and we mourn his loss,” Nadler said.

Representative Jim Jordan, the committee’s top Republican, said “the American people understand it’s time for a real discussion, real debate, real solutions about police treatment of African-Americans.” He also praised President Donald Trump’s efforts in response to Floyd’s death and subsequent protests.

Lawmakers also heard urgent pleas from civil rights advocates for strong reforms and more funding for social services in minority communities, as well as vocal support for police from three witnesses called by Republicans.

Some witnesses and lawmakers participated by video link to ensure social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Fraternal Order of Police has welcomed the bill’s introduction, saying in a statement that further discussions could produce a law capable of having a positive impact on law enforcement and policing.

Senate Republicans are working on rival legislation, due to be released on Friday, which touches on many of the same areas but emphasizes the collection of data rather than changes in laws and policies in key areas.

Kayleigh McEnany, a spokeswoman for Trump, said on Wednesday he could take policy action on race and policing via an executive order. McEnany declined to offer specifics in her comments to Fox News.

The Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee will hold its own hearing next Tuesday.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Richard Cowan; editing by Scott Malone)

Protests roll on against ‘worldwide’ racism

(Reuters) – Demonstrators in Rome held their fists in the air and chanted “No Justice! No Peace!” on Sunday, while in London people defying official warnings not to gather lay down outside the U.S. Embassy as part of a rolling, global anti-racism movement.

In Belgium, police fired tear gas and used a water cannon to disperse about a hundred protesters in a central part of Brussels with many African shops and restaurants. Some protesters were subsequently arrested.

They were part of a crowd of about 10,000 who had gathered at the Palace of Justice, many wearing face masks and carrying banners with the phrase “Black Lives Matter – Belgium to Minneapolis”, “I can’t breathe” and “Stop killing black people”.

“Black Lives Matter is not only about police violence. Here, we experience discrimination that other races do not experience. For example, if we start looking for a flat to rent, we have difficulties. Regarding employment, we are disadvantaged. So it’s not only about police violence,” said 25-year-old insurance broker Randy Kayembe.

The second weekend of demonstrations showed the depth of feeling worldwide over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 after a white officer detaining him knelt on his neck. More protests were also planned across the United States.

In London, where tens of thousands gathered, one banner read: “UK guilty too.”

Footage posted on social media showed demonstrators in Bristol in western England cheering as they tore down a statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century slave trader, and pushed it into a river.

Chaniya La Rose, a 17-year-old student at the London protest with her family, said an end to inequality was long overdue. “It just needs to stop now,” she said. “It shouldn’t have to be this hard to be equal.”

Health minister Matt Hancock had earlier said that joining the Black Lives Matter protests risked contributing to the spread of the coronavirus.

London police chief Cressida Dick said 27 officers had been injured in assaults during protests this week in the city, including 14 on Saturday at the end of a peaceful demonstration.

‘INSTITUTIONAL RACISM’

In Italy, where several thousand people gathered in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo, speakers called out racism at home, in the United States and elsewhere.

U.S. embassies were the focus of protests elsewhere in Europe, with more than 10,000 gathering in the Danish capital Copenhagen, hundreds in Budapest and thousands in Madrid, where they lined the street guarded by police in riot gear.

“I really think we need to finish with the institutional racism that is actually international,” said Gloria Envivas, 24, an English teacher in the Spanish capital.

“It’s not something that is only going on in the USA or in Europe, it’s also worldwide.”

In Thailand, people held an online demonstration on the video platform Zoom, due to restrictions on movement to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

“Everyone has hopes, everyone has dreams, everyone bleeds red, you know,” said Natalie Bin Narkprasert, an organiser of the Thai protest.

Like many people around the world, the group observed a silence in memory of Floyd, in this case, for 8 minutes and 46 seconds – the period he was pinned under the officer’s knee – to know “how it feels”.

Other gatherings were due later, including in the United States, where tens of thousands of demonstrators amassed in Washington and other U.S. cities on Saturday.

(Reporting by Reuters bureaux around the world; Writing by Philippa Fletcher and Catherine Evans; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Rights groups urge U.N. to investigate U.S. ‘police violence’

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Relatives of victims and activist groups called on Monday for the top United Nations human rights body to launch an investigation into “police violence and repression of protests” in the United States.

The joint letter calling for a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council was sent to its 47 member states. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), and ee  (OMCT) were among some 600 groups that signed.

The Geneva forum, which is due to meet from June 15, can hold a special session if requested by one-third of its members. The United States quit the forum two years ago alleging an anti-Israel bias.

The letter was endorsed by the brother and son of George Floyd, the unarmed African American who died in handcuffs on May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. The police officer, who appeared in court on Monday, has been charged with second-degree and third-degree murder as well as second-degree manslaughter.

The death of Floyd, 46, was “only one of a recent string of unlawful killings of unarmed black people by police and armed white vigilantes,” the letter said.

“We are deeply concerned about the escalation in violent police responses to largely peaceful protests in the United States, which included the use of rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray and in some cases live ammunition, in violation of international standards on the use of force and management of assemblies,” it said.

The groups voiced concern that “rather than using his position to serve as a force for calm and unity, President Trump has chosen to weaponize the tensions through his rhetoric”. They also denounced the deployment of more than 60,000 National Guard members in two dozen states.

Recent police killings of unarmed black people, as well as police use of excessive force, violate U.S. obligations under major international human rights treaties, they said, calling for the right to peaceful assembly and protest to be protected.

The rights council should launch an independent inquiry into “racist policing in cities across the country that continues with seeming impunity” since the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri in Aug 2014, and allegations of excessive use of force against peaceful protesters and journalists since Floyd’s murder, they said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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)

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)

Hong Kong mourning for student spirals into street violence

Hong Kong mourning for student spirals into street violence
By Clare Jim and Jessie Pang

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Candlelight Hong Kong vigils mourning a student who died on Friday after a high fall during a pro-democracy rally quickly spiraled into street fires, bursts of tear gas and cat-and-mouse clashes between pro-democracy protesters and police.

The center of violence was on Nathan Road, in the Kowloon district of Mong Kok, one of the most densely populated locations in the world, where activists built barricades and trashed an entrance to the metro station.

Police used a robot to detonate a suspected explosive device on a side street after at least three blasts in the area amid a standoff with petrol-bomb throwing protesters lasting hours.

Police fired tear gas there and in Tseung Kwan O, to the east of the Kowloon peninsula, where the student, Chow Tsz-lok, fell from the third to the second floor of a parking lot in the early hours of Monday.

Chow, 22, who studied at the University of Science and Technology (UST), fell as protesters were being dispersed by police.

He died on Friday – graduation day for many UST students. His death is likely to fuel anger at police, who are under pressure over accusations of excessive force as the former British colony grapples with its worst political crisis in decades.

UST students trashed a campus branch of Starbucks, part of a franchise perceived to be pro-Beijing, and rallies are expected across the territory over the weekend.

“Condemn police brutality,” they wrote on the restaurant’s glass wall.

Hundreds of students, most in masks and carrying candles, then lined up in silence at UST to lay white flowers in tribute.

Thousands also left flowers at the spot where he fell at the car park, occasionally singing hymns.

In the shopping district of Causeway Bay, hundreds lined the streets in silence, with the eerie hum of the city in the background.

Then the mood changed.

People started shouting abuse at “black police”, referring to perceived brutality, and blocked streets in Causeway Bay.

In Mong Kok, dozens of activists barricaded off Nathan Road, which leads to the harbor to the south. They vandalized a closed metro entrance, throwing in bricks and pouring oil through the metal grill, and destroyed a phone booth in a small explosion. There were clashes and fires in the New Territories town of Sha Tin.

In Tseung Kwan O, where people had been leaving flowers and silently crying for hours, people screamed encouragement and abuse after a traffic light was set on fire.

Chow’s friend and fellow UST student, Ben, 25, said the computer science undergraduate liked playing netball and basketball.

“We played netball together for a year,” he told Reuters in tears. “I hope he can rest in peace. I really miss him.”

SPIRAL OF VIOLENCE

Students and young people have been at the forefront of the hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets since June to seek greater democracy, among other demands, and rally against perceived Chinese meddling in the Asian financial hub.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula, allowing it colonial freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary and the right to protest.

China denies interfering in Hong Kong and has blamed Western countries for stirring up trouble.

The protests were ignited by a now-scrapped extradition bill allowing people to be sent to mainland China for trial, but have evolved into wider calls for democracy. They pose one of the biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since he took charge in 2012.

Two pro-Beijing newspapers ran full-page ads, commissioned by “a group of Hong Kong people,” calling for a postponement of the lowest-tier district council elections set for Nov. 24, a move that would infuriate those calling for democracy.

Since June, protesters have thrown petrol bombs and vandalized banks, stores and metro stations. Police have fired rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannons and, in some cases, live ammunition.

In June, Marco Leung, 35, fell to his death from construction scaffolding after unfurling banners against the extradition bill. Several young people who have taken their own lives have been linked to the protests. Chow was the first student to die.

The university called for an independent investigation into Chow’s death, saying an ambulance was blocked by police cars and ambulance officers had to walk to the scene, causing a delay of 20 minutes.

The government expressed “great sorrow and regret”. A police spokeswoman, tears in her eyes, said officers would find out the truth as soon as possible and urged the public to be “calm and rational”.

Police have denied blocking an ambulance. The car park said it would release CCTV footage as soon as possible.

Protests scheduled over the weekend include rallies in shopping malls, some of which have previously descended into chaos as riot police stormed areas crowded with families and children. Protesters have called for a general strike on Monday morning and for people to block public transport. Such calls have come to nothing in the past.

Last weekend, anti-government protesters crowded a shopping mall in running clashes with police that saw a man slash people with a knife and bite off part of the ear of a local politician.

(Reporting by Jessie Pang, Kate Lamb, Sarah Wu, Clare Jim, Felix Tam, Josh Smith, Anne Marie Roantree and Twinnie Siu; Writing by Farah Master and Nick Macfie, Editing by Timothy Heritage)