Donald Trump goes to Saint John Church, an emblematic building very close to the White House which was degraded, on June 1, 2020. – Patrick Semansky / AP / SIPA
President Donald trump promised Monday to restore order to an America plagued by historic outbursts, threatening to deploy the military unless cities and states stop the violence. A week after the homicide in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man suffocated by a white police officer, New York, Los Angeles and dozens of other American cities have stepped up their security measures, decreeing or extending a night curfew.
Faced with unrest added to the pandemic of coronavirus, Donald Trump announced in a martial tone the deployment of “thousands of heavily armed soldiers” and police in Washington to put an end to “the riots” and “the looting”. He judged that the disturbances of the previous day in the federal capital were “a shame”.
Trump photographed Bible in hand
Calling on the governors to act quickly and loudly to “dominate the streets” and break the spiral of violence, he warned them. “If a city or a state refuses to take the necessary decisions to defend the lives and property of its residents, I will deploy the American army to quickly resolve the problem for them”, he launched, denouncing acts of “internal terrorism”.
As he spoke in the entrenched-looking White House gardens, police fired tear gas to disperse protesters gathered outside the compound. The goal was to clear the field towards Saint John’s Church, a nearby iconic building that was degraded on Sunday evening. The president went there on foot, surrounded by members of his cabinet, to be photographed there, a Bible in hand.
Independent autopsy concludes death by asphyxiation
By tens or even hundreds of thousands, Americans demonstrated Saturday and Sunday against police brutality, racism and social inequality, exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis. The country’s first city, New York, announced that it will double the police force and introduce a curfew from 11 p.m. Monday to 5 a.m. Tuesday. From Boston to Los Angeles, from Philadelphia to Seattle, the protest movement was mostly peaceful during the day, but also sparked nightly fires and large-scale destruction.
The source of the anger is the ordeal suffered by George Floyd, who during his arrest was suffocated, handcuffed and lying on the ground, under the knee of a police officer, whose colleagues remained passive. George Floyd died of suffocation due to “strong and prolonged pressure” on his neck and rib cage, Ben Crump, lawyer for the victim’s family, said on Monday, revealing the results of an independent autopsy. . The official autopsy, made public in the process, also found lethal pressure on the neck of the African American, causing his heart to stop.
Neither the dismissal of the agent guilty of the blunder, Derek Chauvin, nor his subsequent arrest calmed the spirits, on the contrary: the protests spread to at least 140 American cities. Faced with clashes mixing demonstrators, thugs and riot forces, soldiers of the National Guard were deployed in more than two dozen metropolises, in a climate of tension not seen since the 1960s.
Thousands of arrests
An extensive security response that was accompanied by the use of armored personnel carriers, the use of tear gas and rubber bullets. Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Cleveland, Dallas, Indianapolis: one by one the American cities have decided to impose a curfew on their inhabitants. In Washington, daylight saving time was advanced Monday at 7 p.m. In Los Angeles, at 6 p.m.
President Trump, faced with the most serious civil unrest in his term, has accused his Democratic presidential rival in November, Joe Biden, of working to get the troublemakers out of prison. The police have made thousands of arrests.
Joe Biden, his face covered with a mask, went to a black parish church in his state of Delaware on Monday to meet with local officials. The former vice-president of Barack Obama is counting on this electorate to win the White House. A supply of voters who learned to chant “Black Lives Matter” and “I can’t breathe”, the last words of George Floyd.
