The Minneapolis Police Department’s website has shown signs of a hack since late Saturday, days after a video purported to be from the hacktivist group Anonymous promised retribution for the death of George Floyd during an arrest.
Websites for the police department and the city of Minneapolis were temporarily inaccessible on Saturday as protesters in cities around the U.S. marched against police violence aimed at black Americans.
By Sunday morning, the pages sometimes required visitors to submit “captchas” to verify they weren’t bots, a tool used to mitigate hacks that attempt to overwhelm pages with automated requests until they stop responding.
Officials with the police department and the city didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Anonymous posted a video on their unconfirmed Facebook page on May 28 directed at the Minneapolis police. The post accused them of having a “horrific track record of violence and corruption.”
The speaker, wearing a hoodie and the Guy Fawkes mask that’s a well-known symbol of the group, concludes the video with, “we do not trust your corrupt organization to carry out justice, so we will be exposing your many crimes to the world. We are a legion. Expect us.”
The video was viewed almost 2.3 million times on Facebook over the weekend, during which violence swept the U.S. as protesters clashed with law enforcement and National Guard troops.
While many demonstrations have been peaceful, others have devolved into rioting. Several cities issued curfews and police have at times turned their rubber bullets and mace on the activists and on journalists covering the protests.
President Donald Trump on Sunday cast blame on the media for stoking the violence that’s followed the death of Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minnesota police custody.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Sunday that the state’s attorney general will take the lead in any prosecutions related to the death of George Floyd, a black man who was in handcuffs when a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into his neck as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.
Walz’s decision to have Attorney General Keith Ellison take the lead comes after requests from activists, some City Council members and a civil rights group, who said putting Ellison on the case would send a strong message that justice will be vigorously pursued. Walz said Ellison has the experience needed to lead the prosecution.
Earlier Sunday, Freeman said that he had asked Ellison to help him in the case, and Ellison agreed they would be full partners.
“There have been recent developments in the facts of the case where the help and expertise of the Attorney General would be valuable,” Freeman said. He did not elaborate.
Derek Chauvin, 44, was charged Friday with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The three other officers who were involved have not been charged, though Freeman and Ellison have said additional charges are possible. Chauvin and the three other officers were fired last week.
A message left with Ellison’s office wasn’t immediately returned.
The Simmons children were out past their bedtime. Frederick Simmons, age 11, and his sister Malia, age 8, had walked with their parents and 2-year old sister Nyla to the base of the Manhattan bridge in Brooklyn, where demonstrators were protesting the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Their signs were almost as tall as their bodies; Malia had written “police suck” in her third-grade handwriting on a big sheet of poster board. The siblings wore small masks their mother had ordered especially for them: Frederick’s had baseballs on it, Malia’s featured characters from the movie Trolls.
They were standing roughly thirty feet away from the police line, shyly explaining why they had showed up to protest: “because of racism,” Malia said. “It’s scary,” said Frederick, “but also you have to stand up for yourself.” Nyla, two years old and sitting in a carrier on her father’s chest, held a sign that said “No Justice! No Peace! No racist police!” that was about three times as big as she was.
Then, in a moment, everything changed. Suddenly people were sprinting away from the cops–police had deployed either pepper spray or tear gas, nobody was sure–and the Simmons kids were briefly separated. The family reunited shortly afterwards and the kids were given new instructions: next time they have to run, go towards a wall and not into the crowd, so their parents can find them quickly.
That moment, their mother Kenyatta Reid said later, reflected what it feels like to be black in America: “You think you’re safe and everything’s fine,” she said later, “and then everything comes crumbling down, and you’re getting attacked.”
For many black Americans who flooded the streets of dozens of cities this weekend, the killing of George Floyd was the just the latest indignity in a year marked with increasingly unbearable death and despair. The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected African Americans, who are more likely to contract COVID-19 and more likely to die than their white counterparts; African Americans make up just 12% of the population but account for more than nearly 26% of the COVID-19 cases and nearly 23% of deaths, according to CDC data. One study found that majority-black counties accounted for nearly half of all coronavirus cases and more than 60% of deaths.
The economic impact of the virus and the attempt to combat it has also disproportionately affected black communities: 44% of black Americans say that someone in their household has lost a job or taken a pay cut because of the pandemic, and 73% said they didn’t have a rainy day fund for an emergency, according to Pew. Most of the “essential workers” who risked their lives to keep New York City running are people of color, according to the Comptroller’s office.
On top of all that, a string of killings of black Americans has made the pervasive racial injustice even more acute: Ahmaud Arbery, gunned down by white vigilantes as he jogged in Georgia; Breonna Taylor, an emergency room technician who was shot eight times in her Kentucky home as police executed a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night; and George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.
“It’s either COVID is killing us, cops are killing us, the economy is killing us,” says Priscilla Borker, a 31-year old social worker who joined the demonstrations in Brooklyn on Friday. “Every corner that people of color turn, they’re being pushed.”
After months of social distancing to avoid spreading COVID-19, the protests represented a breaking point not just in the fight against racist police violence, but also in the fight against the disease. By gathering in crowds with little chance of social distance, the masked demonstrators risked not just police violence but their own health, all to lend their voices to the chorus demanding an end to racist violence.
“I’m more fearful of a police officer taking my life than I’m afraid of COVID-19,” says Ozzie Lumpkin, a 30-year old sales manager who attended the protest to honor the memory of jogger Ahmaud Arbery. “I look at running as my freedom,” says Lumpkin, who runs 75-100 miles a week. “When he got killed, I felt like a part of my freedom was taken away.”
“You think about the cop who had his knee on Floyd, you think about how America has its knee on people of color,” says Borker. “And so whether we stay home or think about the risk of coming out here in regards to the COVID crisis, either way we’re still being killed. So we don’t mind taking this risk.”
But after protesting for years against police killings of black Americans–Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and thousands of others–some activists say they feel little has changed. “I know what it is to be called a N*****,” says James Talton, a 32-year old fitness instructor who protested in Brooklyn on Friday. He says he heard stories about his father’s struggles against Southern segregation, and “I feel like I’m still dealing with the same sh*t my dad dealt with.”
For that reason, Talton says, he doesn’t condone looting, but he does understand why angry demonstrators would destroy property. “For us to get the attention that we need, we’ve gotta set things on fire. Because it seems like nobody’s paying attention,” he said. “I’m afraid of living in America, period.”
Movement leaders say that this moment is different: between the health and economic carnage wreaked by Covid-19, the violent police crackdowns of this weekend’s protests, and the President’s tweets calling activists “thugs” and threatening them with “vicious dogs,” racial tensions have escalated to a breaking point.
“There is literally a brewing civil war that is happening,” says Alicia Garza, a leading racial justice organizer and founder of Black Futures Lab who helped coin the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” The militarization of police, the reports of white supremacist agitators infiltrating peaceful protests, and the rise of overt white nationalism have changed the stakes of the fight, Garza says. “White supremacists are now above ground and operating in broad daylight and being encouraged by our President and this White House,” she says.
In that unnervingly real sense, the battle has entered a new phase. “In 2014, people were building and understanding, we were still convincing people of all races that this was an issue,” says Deray McKesson, a civil rights activist and co-founder of Campaign Zero who was one of the most visible demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri. “Now it’s like, okay people are ready, they know the right and wrong, but they don’t know how to fix it.”
“I’m not having the same conversations about ‘All Lives Matter,’ that’s changed,” says Garza, adding that she now sees far more white allies in the streets than she did in 2013. But even if public sentiment has swung in their direction (particularly among young people,) the official response hasn’t changed. “Where are the officials that have used the opportunity of this protest to announce a political change, to change the rules that keep black people unsafe?” Garza says.
After they reunited, the Simmons family stayed out. Nyla wasn’t crying, and the kids were shaken but not deterred. So they trekked about a mile down the road to the Barclays Center, where activists were continuing to demonstrate. As they walked, Frederick raised his sign up high above his head, letters in elementary-school handwriting spelling out: “Am I next?”
MINNEAPOLIS — Officials in Minnesota say no protesters appear to have been hit after a semitrailer drove into a crowd demonstrating on a freeway near downtown Minneapolis.
The Minnesota State Patrol says in a tweet that the action appeared deliberate. The patrol says the driver was injured and taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
It wasn’t clear how the driver was hurt. TV footage showed protesters swarming the truck, and then law enforcement quickly moving in.
Other TV footage showed the tanker truck moving rapidly onto the bridge and protesters appearing to part ahead of it.
The protesters were demonstrating against the death of George Floyd.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — Tense protests over the death of George Floyd and other police killings of black people grew Saturday from New York to Tulsa to Los Angeles, with police cars set ablaze and reports of injuries mounting on all sides as the country convulsed through another night of unrest after months of coronavirus lockdowns.
The protests, which began in Minneapolis following Floyd’s death Monday after a police officer pressed a knee on his neck until he stopped breathing, have left parts of the city a grid of broken windows, burned-out buildings and ransacked stores. The unrest has since become a national phenomenon as protesters decry years of deaths at police hands.
Tens of thousands of people were in the streets across the country, many of them not wearing masks or observing social distancing, raising concerns among health experts about the potential for spreading the coronavirus pandemic at a time when much of the country is in the process of reopening society and the economy.
After a tumultuous Friday night, racially diverse crowds took to the streets again for mostly peaceful demonstrations in dozens of cities from coast to coast. The previous day’s protests also started calmly, but many descended into violence later in the day.
Ashlee Rezin Garcia–Chicago Sun-Times/APA Chicago police vehicle is set on fire during violent protests Saturday, May 30, 2020, as outrage builds over the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis on May 25 after a police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes.
• In Washington, the National Guard was deployed outside the White House, where chanting crowds were taunting Secret Service agents. Dressed in camouflage and holding shields, the troops stood in a tight line a few yards from the crowd, preventing them from pushing forward. President Donald Trump, who spent much of Saturday in Florida for the SpaceX rocket launch, landed on the lawn in the presidential helicopter at dusk and went inside without speaking to journalists.
• In Philadelphia, at least 13 officers were injured when peaceful protests turned violent and at least four police vehicles were set on fire. Other fires were set throughout downtown.
• In the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of a 1921 massacre of black people that left as many as 300 dead and the city’s thriving black district in ruins, protesters blocked intersections and chanted the name of Terence Crutcher, a black man killed by a police officer in 2016.
• In Seattle, police fired tear gas and stun grenades to try to disperse black-clad crowds that smashed downtown shopfronts, stole merchandise and tossed mannequins onto the street.
• In Los Angeles, protesters chanted “Black Lives Matter,” some within inches of the face shields of officers. Police used batons to move the crowd back and fired rubber bullets. One man used a skateboard to try to break a police SUV’s windshield. A spray-painted police car burned in the street.
• And in New York City, dangerous confrontations flared repeatedly as officers made arrests and cleared streets. A video showed two NYPD cruisers lurching into a crowd of demonstrators who were pushing a barricade against one of them and pelting it with objects, knocking several people to the ground. It was unclear if anyone was hurt.
Wong Maye-E–APPolice detain protesters as they march down the street during a solidarity rally for George Floyd, Saturday, May 30, 2020, in New York. Protests were held throughout the city over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on May 25.
“Our country has a sickness. We have to be out here,” said Brianna Petrisko, among those at lower Manhattan’s Foley Square, where most were wearing masks amid the coronavirus pandemic. “This is the only way we’re going to be heard.”
Back in Minneapolis, the city where the protests began, 29-year-old Sam Allkija said the damage seen in recent days reflects longstanding frustration and rage in the black community.
“I don’t condone them,” he said. “But you have to look deeper into why these riots are happening.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who said local forces had been overmatched Friday, fully mobilized the state’s National Guard and promised a massive show of force. The Guard announced Saturday it had more than 4,000 members responding to Minneapolis and would quickly have nearly 11,000.
“The situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd,” Walz said. “It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear and disrupting our great cities.”
Soon after the city’s 8 p.m. curfew went into force, lines of police cars and officers in riot gear moved in to confront protesters, firing tear gas to push away throngs of people milling around the city’s 5th police precinct station. The tougher tactics came after city and state leaders were criticized for not forcefully enough confronting days of violent and damaging protests that included protesters burning down a police station shortly after officers abandoned it.
Scott Olson–Getty ImagesDemonstrators gather to protest the killing of George Floyd on May 30, 2020 in Minneapolis.
Trump appeared to cheer on the tougher tactics being used by law enforcement Saturday night. He commended the Guard deployment in Minneapolis, declaring “No games!” and also said police in New York City “must be allowed to do their job!”
Overnight curfews were imposed in more than a dozen major cities nationwide, ranging from 6 p.m. in parts of South Carolina to 10 p.m. around Ohio. People were also told to be off the streets of Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and Minneapolis — where thousands had ignored the same order Friday night.
More than 1,300 people have been arrested in 16 cities since Thursday, with more than 500 of those happening in Los Angeles on Friday.
The unrest comes at a time when most Americans have spent months inside over concerns surrounding the coronavirus, which the president has called an “invisible enemy.” The events of the last 72 hours, seen live on national television, have shown the opposite: a sudden pivot to crowds, screaming protesters and burning buildings, a stark contrast to the empty streets of recent months.
“Quite frankly I’m ready to just lock people up,” Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields said at a news conference. Demonstrations there turned violent Friday, and police were arresting protesters Saturday on blocked-off downtown streets. “Yes, you caught us off balance once. It’s not going to happen twice.”
This week’s unrest recalled the riots in Los Angeles nearly 30 years ago after the acquittal of the white police officers who beat Rodney King, a black motorist who had led them on a high-speed chase. The protests of Floyd’s killing have gripped many more cities, but the losses in Minneapolis have yet to approach the staggering totals Los Angeles saw during five days of rioting in 1992, when more than 60 people died, 2,000-plus were injured and thousands arrested, with property damage topping $1 billion.
Many protesters spoke of frustration that Floyd’s death was one more in a litany. It came in the wake of the killing in Georgia of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was shot dead after being pursued by two white men while running in their neighborhood, and in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic that has thrown millions out of work, killed more than 100,000 people in the U.S. and disproportionately affected black people.
The officer who held his knee to Floyd’s neck as he begged for air was arrested Friday and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. But many protesters are demanding the arrests of the three other officers involved.
Leaders in many affected cities have voiced outrage over Floyd’s killing and expressed sympathy for protesters’ concerns. But as the unrest intensified, they spoke of a desperate need to protect their cities and said they would call in reinforcements, despite concerns that could lead to more heavy-handed tactics.
Minnesota has steadily increased to 1,700 the number of National Guardsmen it says it needs to contain the unrest, and the governor is considering a potential offer of military police put on alert by the Pentagon.
Governors in Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio and Texas also activated the National Guard after protests there turned violent overnight, while nighttime curfews were put in place in Portland, Oregon, Cincinnati and elsewhere.
Police in St. Louis were investigating the death of a protester who climbed between two trailers of a Fed Ex truck and was killed when it drove away. And a person was killed in the area of protests in downtown Detroit just before midnight after someone fired shots into an SUV, officers said. Police had initially said someone fired into the crowd from an SUV.
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Numerous AP journalists contributed from across the U.S.
