MINNEAPOLIS – The full Minnesota National Guard was activated for the first time since World War Two after four nights of civil unrest that has spread to other U.S. cities following the death of a black man shown on video gasping for breath as a white Minneapolis policeman knelt on his neck.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said the deployment was necessary because outside agitators were using protests over the death of George Floyd to sow chaos, and that he expected Saturday night’s demonstrations to be the fiercest so far.
From Minneapolis to several other major cities including New York, Atlanta and Washington, protesters clashed with police late on Friday in a rising tide of anger over the treatment of minorities by law enforcement.
“We are under assault,” Walz, a first-term governor elected from Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, told a briefing on Saturday. “Order needs to be restored. … We will use our full strength of goodness and righteousness to make sure this ends.”
He said he believed a “tightly controlled” group of outsiders, including white supremacists and drug cartel members, were instigating some of the violence in Minnesota’s largest city, but he did not give specific evidence of this when asked by reporters.
As many as 80% of those arrested were from outside the state, Walz said. But detention records show just eight non-Minnesota residents have been booked into the Hennepin County Jail since Tuesday, and it was unclear whether all of them were arrested in connection with the Minneapolis unrest.
The Republican Trump administration suggested civil disturbances were being orchestrated from the political left.
“In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups – far-left extremist groups – using antifa-like tactics, many of whom travel from outside the state to promote violence,” U.S. Attorney William Barr said in a statement.
In an extraordinary move, the Pentagon said it put military units on a four-hour alert to be ready if requested by Walz to help keep the peace.
Defying a curfew imposed by the city’s mayor, protesters took to Minneapolis streets for a fourth night on Friday – albeit in smaller numbers than before – despite the announcement hours earlier of criminal charges filed against Derek Chauvin, the policeman seen in video footage kneeling on Floyd’s neck on Monday.
Chauvin was arrested on third-degree murder and manslaughter charges, and faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
Three other officers fired from the police department with Chauvin on Tuesday are also under criminal investigation in the case, prosecutors said.
The graphic video of Floyd’s arrest – captured by an onlooker’s cellphone as he repeatedly groaned, “please, I can’t breathe” before becoming motionless – triggered an outpouring of rage that civil rights activists said has long simmered in Minneapolis and cities across the country over persistent racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system. (Reuters)
