(Portland) The night from Saturday to Sunday was marked in several cities of the United States by new clashes, sometimes violent, between police officers and demonstrators protesting against racism and the deployment of federal agents ordered by Donald Trump .
Published on 26 July 2020 at 8 a.m. 07 Updated to 11 h 25
Agnes BUN
France Media Agency
A man was shot and killed on Saturday night on the sidelines of a protest in Austin, Texas. According to local police, he was “probably armed with a rifle” when he approached the vehicle of the fatal gunman, who was arrested and is cooperating with authorities.
Protests have taken place across the country, from Omaha, Oakland and Los Angeles, California, to New York, via Louisville, Kentucky, or Richmond, Virginia, where riot police allegedly launched gas to disperse a march of the Black Lives Matter movement, according to US media.
PHOTO APU GOMES, FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY
Police gathered outside Los Angeles City Hall during a protest demanding justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The historic wave of anger against racism and law enforcement brutality was sparked by the death, in late May in Minneapolis, of black forty-something George Floyd under the knee of a white police officer.
In Portland, where the movement is still strong more than two months later, the night was again tense near the federal court, which has become the epicenter of the protests.
The police used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse the demonstrators, several of whom were arrested by federal agents after trying to knock down a barrier erected around the court, noted a journalist from the 'AFP.
PHOTO MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ordered by President Trump, who is facing an increasingly difficult battle for his re-election and is campaigning on the theme of “law and order”, the dispatch of federal police officers has fanned the embers of the dispute.
In many videos posted on social networks, we see these agents, in paramilitary clothing and without visible identification badges, using unmarked vehicles to stop demonstrators.
Methods which are now the subject of an official investigation by the Department of Justice, and which were strongly condemned Sunday on CNN by the mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot: “We will not allow anonymous agents to 'arrest people, violate their rights and keep them in detention ”.
Seattle overflows
Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he will be beefing up federal agents in Chicago and other cities after a resurgence in crime and shootings since the start of the summer.
PHOTO TED S. WARREN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
This protester was attended by Seattle Police at a Black Lives Matter rally at Cal Anderson Park.
In Seattle, Washington, the night from Saturday to Sunday was particularly hectic. The sound of detonations echoed in some streets and smoke rose from an area where protesters set fire to trailers at a construction site of a juvenile detention center, according to a reporter from the AFP on site.
Some of the demonstrators tried to protect themselves with umbrellas from the pepper spray thrown by the police to put an end to the overflows.
The authorities announced on Twitter that 45 people had been arrested during these “riots”.
“The rioters had no respect for the safety of the population, for the safety of the police or for the businesses and properties they destroyed”, declared Seattle police chief Carmen Best, according to comments reported by local media.
On Saturday, three people were slightly injured by firearms on the sidelines of an anti-racist protest in Louisville, Kentucky. The police, however, spoke of “accidental” circumstances.
PHOTO JEFF DEAN, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
In this city, black activists from the NFAC group, heavily armed, protested against the death of Breonna Taylor, a black woman killed by the police in March in her apartment. But police had to be deployed to avoid clashes with white counter-demonstrators from a conservative group, also armed.
