Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, died in Minneapolis on 25 May when an officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest. That officer, Derek Chauvin, was fired then charged with murder. On Wednesday afternoon Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general,
announced an elevate charge against Chauvin and charged three more officers with aiding and abetting.
Protests against police brutality and racism arose after Floyd’s death, before a crackdown by federal and state authorities led to the worst civil unrest in the US since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968.
Curfews remain in place in most major US cities, dampening the potential for confrontation between protesters and police in the hours of darkness. On Tuesday, many marchers defied the deadline.
Minneapolis and St Paul, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Atlanta and other cities remained largely peaceful. In cities including Portland, Oregon, and Tampa and St Petersburg in Florida, crowds were forcibly dispersed.
In Washington, where the area around the White House has seen intense clashes involving federal officers, demonstrators gathered calmly. On Wednesday, a crowd
gathered on Capitol Hill.
As they did so, and as the US president
continued to defend the decision to use rubber bullets and chemical agents against protesters around St John’s church on Monday, the defense secretary, Mark Esper, said he did not agree with Trump’s wish to use combat troops to impose or maintain order.
“I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act,” Esper told reporters at the Pentagon, referring to
1807 legislation which would allow the president to call in units moved close to Washington.
The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, later
told reporters the Insurrection Act was “definitely a tool within [Trump’s] power”. She also declined to say if Trump might fire his defense secretary for his public comments. It was later reported that the Pentagon had
reversed a decision to move combat units away.
Elsewhere, a prominent African American police chief called for a ban on police chokeholds and restraints similar to that which killed Floyd, whose official autopsy ruled his death a homicide.
“We do not just need a nationwide ban,” Cerelyn Davis, police chief of Durham, North Carolina, told ABC News. “We need nationwide standards. We need sweeping changes that are supported with legislation … to ensure that every agency large and small have the best practices in place or we are going to continue to see these [deaths].”
“The emotions and feelings that we see expressed out on the streets of cities all across the country going way back are substantiated,” Davis added. “There have been years and years of systemic racism in law enforcement.”
In New York in July 2014, a chokehold during an arrest resulted in the death of
Eric Garner. His last words, “I can’t breathe”, became a rallying cry of the
Black Lives Matter movement. Floyd said the same words as he lay handcuffed in Minneapolis on Memorial Day.
The New York police chief, Terrence Monahan, told ABC all police leaders needed to “take a good hard look at their agency, to bridge the gap between cops and community”.
“Whatever reforms there are it’s important that we see one another as human,” he said.
Floyd’s memorial service will be in Minneapolis on Thursday. His funeral will be in Houston, where he grew up, next week. Art Acevedo, Houston police chief, rejected Trump’s threat to send troops into states that do not “dominate” protesters.
“This is Texas,” Acevedo told ABC, “cities are safe, things are going well here, we do not need any support in terms of federal troops.”
The Insurrection Act of 1807 was passed by Thomas Jefferson, the third president, alarmed by the
behaviour of former vice-president Aaron Burr in the unsettled west. It was last invoked in 1992, over riots in Los Angeles provoked by the police beating of Rodney King.
On Wednesday, Esper said: “The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now.”
Trump has repeatedly said he thinks the US is in such a situation. On Monday, the president harangued governors on a call
leaked to outlets including the Guardian. On Wednesday,
he told Fox News Radio: “After we had the one evening which was a little rough, we brought in the troops.”
He also claimed he had not spent part of Friday night in a bunker under the White House,
but had “inspected” it briefly during the day. That was contrary to multiple reports citing White House officials.
Trump also said protesters “burned down” St John’s church, where on Monday the president posed with a Bible, a controversial photo op staged to
reassure evangelical supporters. In fact, the rector of the “Church of the Presidents” told parishioners a “small fire” damaged part of the basement.
Esper also addressed criticism for his decision, with Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, to walk with Trump to St John’s after peaceful protesters were forcibly cleared from the area. The defense secretary said he always “tried to stay apolitical” and had not been “aware that a photo op was happening”.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), meanwhile, filed a lawsuit against Minneapolis police and the Minnesota state patrol, alleging violations of the rights of journalists covering protests.
Journalists have been injured across the US. The lead plaintiff in the ACLU case is Jared Goyette,
a freelance reporter who has
covered the protests for the Guardian. He says he was shot in the face by a rubber bullet fired by police.
