NYC braces: George Floyd protesters ignore earlier curfew, NYPD enforce new roadblocks
From WWW.FOXNEWS.COM
Tense moments followed New York City’s 8 p.m. curfew Tuesday night after authorities took measures to reduce violence, vandalism and looting after days of protests.
City leaders had braced for another night of demonstrations, bolstering their presence and enforcing an even earlier curfew than the one implemented Monday.
The city, like others around the country, has been rocked by protests over the death of George Floyd, which happened in Minneapolis on May 25 while he was in police custody.
In an effort to slow any potential violence, authorities moved the city’s curfew to 8 p.m. Tuesday and warned residents that only buses, delivery trucks and the vehicles of essential workers will be allowed south of 96th Street after that time. The NYPD also canceled regular days off for “all full duty uniformed members,” according to a police memo.
Still, thousands of protesters remained in the streets hours after the new curfew, even as police enforced new roadblocks.
As part of the enhanced measures, police installed checkpoints on the streets to block unauthorized vehicles. In some places, as protesters continued to march into the night, there was relative calm. But evidence of vandalism was once again visible in some parts of the city.
A group of marchers was arrested on the West Side Highway after the 8 p.m. curfew, the New York Post reported, but videos from elsewhere in the city continued to show large crowds into the night.
One video from Times Square showed large crowds of people still gathered in the street nearly two hours after the curfew. Most wore masks, any many of them seemed to be standing around.
People periodically left the crowd and walked out of view of the camera until a larger group began to walk out of the area. Other video taken nearby showed crowds moving down the street.
Pockets of unrest flared up here and there, according to local reports.
Around 9 p.m., hundreds of marchers busted up a Verizon store at Fulton Street and Broadway -- near City Hall -- the Daily News reported. The crowd allegedly moved down Canal Street and returned to Broadway, smashing windows along the way.
Around the same time, at least five people, two of them NYPD officers, were injured in a police-involved shooting in Brooklyn, according to ABC 7. It was not immediately clear whether the gunfire was connected in any way to the protests.
Other videos showed a tense face-off between a chanting crowd and police officers outside a school and police arresting about a dozen protesters in front of a bank.
About a half hour before curfew time, thousands of protesters made their way toward Trump Tower in Manhattan. Fox News’ Bryan Llenas, who was reporting from the sidelines, shared videos of the scenes on Twitter.
They showed a heavy police presence with uniformed officers and steel fencing installed in an effort to minimize looting and violence.
“So far in NYC, it is a completely different night,” than the night before, he tweeted at 8:40.
Fox News' Marta Dhanis saw arrests in the city's SoHo neighborhood and broken windows at a Manhattan Gap store, but she also said things appeared to be calmer than they were earlier in the week.
And across the East River, as a crowd of protesters in Brookl... (Read more)
Tweets mentioned:
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https://twitter.com/user/status/1267979422566621185
https://twitter.com/user/status/1267982923657084933
https://twitter.com/user/status/1268002638643281922
https://twitter.com/user/status/1267917444145913857
https://twitter.com/user/status/1267977976991399938
https://twitter.com/user/status/1267932051220631552
Submitted 1416 days ago
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