Past 2020 election coverage

Protesters from Minneapolis drove Mayor Jacob Frey out of a rally Saturday, chanting “Shame! Shame!” after he rejected calls to defund the police.

It was a striking moment that illustrated just how much the national conversation has changed in the nearly two weeks of protests over the death of George Floyd, who was killed on May 25 by a Minneapolis officer who knelt on his neck. What was once a niche, radical argument — defund the police — has become a rallying call for protesters who want drastic changes that will dismantle a system they see as racist and ineffective.

While most Americans don’t support cutting police budgets (according to a Yahoo/YouGov poll conducted during the early days of the protests), officials are now being forced to at least contend with these arguments. That includes Frey, who had campaigned on a platform of police reform before he was elected in 2017. He was confronted with the question during a rally he visited on Saturday: When a woman on stage gave him a microphone to answer whether or not he’d defund the Minneapolis Police Department, he answered, “I do not support the full abolition of the police.”

Following his response, protesters booed the mayor and chanted “Go home, Jacob, go home!” and “Shame! Shame!”

Later, in an interview with the New York Times, Frey said he still supported a “deep structural reform of a racist system” such as prohibiting the police union from collective bargaining. It’s a move that, according to one study, could reduce violent police misconduct, but is far from what activists are seeking.

Some of the activists’ demands have been met: Following Floyd’s death, the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board terminated their relationships with the police department.

For Minneapolis activists supporting the abolishment of the police, however, this isn’t enough.

MPD150, a community organization in Minneapolis, wrote on its website that police departments need to be abolished because the system is inherently flawed: “It’s not just that police are ineffective: in many communities, they’re actively harmful. The history of policing is a history of violence against the marginalized.”

The transition would be gradual, according to MPD150; resources and funding will need to be strategically moved from the police to community-based models of safety.

“A world without police would look like safety that is controlled and is led by our community, that focuses on transformation and transformative justice,” Kandace Montgomery, director of Black Visions Collective and founder of the Minneapolis chapter of Black Lives Matter, told the Intercept. “A world without police means that everybody has what they need to survive and what they need to live healthy lives. It means we have the money that we need for education, health care, housing, workers’ rights.”

The Minneapolis City Council has been one of the most responsive to protesters across the nation

Mayor Jacob Frey may not support defunding the police, but the movement isn’t entirely rejected by city officials. Activists have at least four out of 13 Minneapolis City Council members on their side.

Council member Jeremiah Ellison — who has been an outspoken critic of the police’s response to the protests, according to the Star Tribune — first tweeted on Thursday, “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together. We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response.” Other members, including City Council President Lisa Bender, joined Ellison’s call for defunding the police shortly after.

Although the council will likely not discuss the idea until later this year or next, City Council member Steve Fletcher shared an outline of what the future would look like without the police in a Time op-ed.

“We had already pushed for pilot programs to dispatch county mental health professionals to mental health calls, and fire department EMTs to opioid overdose calls, without police officers,” he wrote. “We have similarly experimented with unarmed, community-oriented street teams on weekend nights downtown to focus on de-escalation. We could similarly turn traffic enforcement over to cameras and, potentially, our parking enforcement staff, rather than our police department.”

These calls for radical reform aren’t welcomed by all Minneapolis residents.

“What does that even mean? Then who provides the public service of policing? I don’t even know how to answer that,” Steve Birch, who chairs the neighborhood council of the predominantly white Linden Hills area, told the New York Times.

But it’s not just Minneapolis facing demands from activists to dismantle their police departments. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said he’d cut up to $150 million from the police budget and invest in marginalized communities instead. Meanwhile, staffers of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an open letter to their boss demanding a $1 billion cut from the police department’s budget of $6 billion.

More significant reform will likely be an uphill battle for activists, considering the historically strong support for law enforcement officers. The YouGov poll, which was conducted from May 29 to 30 among 1,060 US adults, found that only 16 percent of Americans want to defund the police. Meanwhile, 65 percent opposed cutting funding for police departments. This could change, however, as protests continue — especially among white Americans: in a Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project survey, those who had a favorable impression of police dropped from 72 percent to 61 percent following Floyd’s death.

In his op-ed, Fletcher acknowledged that “reform can be daunting, even scary” but still invited readers to “reimagine what public safety means.”

“The whole world is watching,” he wrote. “We can declare policing as we know it a thing of the past, and create a compassionate, non-violent future.”

Cities and towns across the country saw multiple peaceful protests against police brutality and racism throughout the day on Saturday — from family-themed marches to dance parties — with many taking on the feel of a community gathering as a way to stand up in solidarity.

The protests, which began almost two weeks ago following the death of George Floyd, were mostly calm this weekend as protesters marched through neighborhoods and downtowns from coast to coast, holding signs that read “Black Lives Matter” and “No justice, no peace.” It was a stark contrast to a week ago, when tensions escalated as protesters clashed with the police in numerous cities.

Washington, DC, saw its largest crowds yet as people flocked to the nation’s capital to protest police violence against the black community. Ahead of the demonstrations, Mayor Muriel Bowser had “Black Lives Matter” painted in bold yellow words on 16th Street, which leads directly to the White House, and renamed an area in front of the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza.” Thousands of people gathered in front of the Capitol and Lincoln Memorial before merging in front of the White House.

President Donald Trump commented on the protests by tweeting, “Much smaller crowd in D.C. than anticipated.” While the hundreds of thousands expected did not materialize, Saturday’s protests were, in fact, the largest the city had seen in the past two weeks.

Demonstrations in Philadelphia also attracted thousands of people. Protesters flocked to City Hall to demand defunding of the police and redirecting the money to city services, such as the library and public parks. People were out past the city’s curfew of 8 pm, but the protesters eventually peacefully dispersed before midnight on their own, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

As the crowds grew, the protests also became a place for the community to get together. In Philadelphia, a couple joined the protests on their wedding day to march in a suit and wedding dress. The people around them clapped and cheered as they held hands and kissed in the middle of the street.

In Atlanta, the protests also became a center for community building as demonstrators danced to Childish Gambino’s “This is America” — which has become an informal anthem for the protests. People also enjoyed live music played by a band perched on top of a parking garage, CNN reported.

“Music has completely changed the atmosphere, as you can see,” the band director told CNN. “As soon as we started playing, the crowd just immediately came this way. We just want justice. We understand what’s going on. Music will bring togetherness and everybody is here now.”

Protesters in Detroit also threw a dance party on Saturday as a way to help the community deal with the trauma caused by recent violence. MLive’s Dana Afana reported that people gathered downtown for dabke, a native Levantine folk dance, before heading back to the police headquarters for another round of protests.

“I saw during the crowd people trying to move their feet and move their bodies to kind of match with the marching. I’m just trying to let the people get out this energy that they have in a positive way and a way they can own,” Jah-T Headd, a Detroit resident who helped organize the dancing, told MLive. “As black people specifically, we deal with our trauma, we deal with our pain, often times through song and dance.” 

The protests’ presence also continued to grow overseas.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in London, despite Covid-19 warnings from the health minister. Though a pandemic-related order banned more than six people from different households from gathering outside, the crowed marched together from Parliament Square to the US Embassy and even knelt on the ground for a minute in solidarity of the Black Lives Matter movement, according to the New York Times.

At least 20,000 people marched in Sydney to protest the police mistreatment of the black community as well as Indigenous Australians. The march almost didn’t happen: It was ruled unlawful under Covid-19 restrictions on Friday, but the decision was overturned by the court of appeals minutes before the event was supposed to begin.

The protests spread as far as Japan, where nearly 1,000 people marched in Tokyo and Osaka to speak out on police abuse, Japan Times reported. The demonstrations were fueled by the violent arrest of a Kurdish man by Tokyo police officers on May 22 — just three days before the death of George Floyd.

“We all know what’s happening in the US,” protester Nami Nanami told Japan Times. “The same thing is happening in Japan but nobody is talking about it.”

There have still been some escalations, despite protesters’ calls for accountability

City officials attempted to tone down their response to the protests by eliminating curfews and reducing arrests, with mixed success.

DC and Los Angeles lifted curfews earlier in the week, and protesters remained peaceful as demonstrations lasted late into the night. And officers didn’t enforce curfews in cities where they still existed, such as in New York City.

The number of arrests also drastically fell: Chicago, which once arrested more than 100 protesters in a single day, announced that the police made no arrests on Saturday. Cities like Atlanta, DC, Phoenix, and Miami made similar announcements.

Some officials also made the effort to keep their officers accountable. On Saturday, a Virginian police officer was charged with three counts of misdemeanor assault and battery for a violent arrest he made on Friday. Body camera footage reveals the officer using his stun gun on a black man who was walking away, then using it again when the man is already face-down on the ground.

Another officer from St. Louis was suspended for driving into a man on June 2 — and two other officers involved in the incident were also placed on leave. None have been arrested.

Despite these efforts, however, not all protests were free from conflict due to provocation from the police: In Seattle, the police used tear gas to disperse a peaceful crowd — even though the mayor had promised a 30-day ban on the use of the chemical weapon just a day before.

Provocations such as these are likely to help ensure the protests continue — particularly given they are part of what demonstrators hope to change. Whether high attendance can be sustained remains to be seen — but large protests are again expected across the world Sunday.

Hundreds of people lined up outside a conference center in Raeford, North Carolina, on Saturday to attend a memorial service for George Floyd.

When Floyd’s gold casket rolled into the building in Raeford — just outside of Fayetteville, where Floyd was born — crowds nearby reportedly shouted, “Black power! George Floyd!”

For hours, the public walked through the center — socially distant, masked, and 10 at a time — to view Floyd’s body. Later in the day, at 3 pm ET, a service for the family was held, which was also broadcast online for all to take part in.

Outside the conference building, people continued to honor Floyd by lining the streets with flowers and signs as the service proceeded. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper paid his respects by lowering the flags on state facilities to half-staff for the day. And some mourners even came from out of town, like Gregg Packer, who took an overnight train from Long Island to attend the memorial, the News & Observer reported.

“I felt like I needed to come down here to support the protests and the family of George Floyd,” he told the News & Observer. “I hope that we can all get along with each other, that we can start treating each other the way we all should.”

The service was held for about 125 people in a room where a painting of Floyd with a halo and angel wings stood. Family members, friends, and state officials gathered to not only celebrate the life of George Floyd but also to condemn the police violence that led to his death.

Hoke County Sheriff Hubert Peterkin criticized his colleagues who abuse their power: “We, as law enforcement officers, don’t have the authority to bully, push people around, and kill them because we have on a badge and a gun,” he said.

Peterkin added, “I don’t care how much you march with the groups, get on your knees and play with the children, It doesn’t mean nothing if you can’t say these six words, ‘We are part of the problem.’”

US Rep. G.K. Butterfield also spoke to the guests to announce that the Congressional Black Caucus would unveil a legislative response to police violence against black people on Wednesday with the goal of preparing a floor vote by the end of June.

The service is the second of three planned. The first was held on Thursday in Minneapolis, where Rev. Al Sharpton delivered a moving eulogy:

“The reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed of being is you kept your knee on our neck,” Sharpton said, addressing the nation. “It’s time for us to stand up in George’s name and say, get your knee off our necks.”

Another memorial service will be held on Monday in Houston, where Floyd grew up and lived most of his life.

Protesters — both in the US and worldwide — continue to mourn the death of George Floyd

The memorial came amid large protests scattered across the US, many of which proceeded peacefully following an end to curfews in cities across the nation.

On Saturday, thousands gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital before marching toward the White House:

The protest is projected to grow to one of the largest in the city’s history, with hundreds of thousands expected to attend.

Protesters also continued to gather in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed. On Friday, more than a thousand people gathered at the offices of Attorney General Keith Ellison and demanded he review all recent police shootings, the Star Tribune reported. More protests are planned there for Saturday.

Thousands marched in Philadelphia at the same time Floyd’s memorial service was held in North Carolina. The protests were peaceful as they shouted their demands for racial justice and budget cuts to the police department, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“If you’re silent right now you’re part of the problem,” protester Kolby Kent Nelson told the publication.

Thousands also participated in demonstrations in Chicago, Phoenix, Orlando, and dozens of other cities and towns across the US. And protests were held across several different countries as well, including Germany, France, Japan, Iran, and Zimbabwe.

In London, tens of thousands of people showed up at Parliament Square to walk toward the US embassy on Saturday afternoon despite a pandemic-related order banning more than six people from different households from gathering outside. The crowd silently knelt in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement for one minute, according to the New York Times.

Demonstrations in Australia also attracted thousands who protested police violence against indigenous Australians. Protesters chanted “I can’t breathe” — the dying words of both George Floyd and David Dungay Jr, an indigenous Australian who died while in police custody in 2015.

Hundreds also gathered in Paris, although authorities banned protests outside the US Embassy. Undeterred, protesters gathered at a public square near the embassy and held up their Black Lives Matter signs, Reuters reported.

Although the protests are growing calmer than when they first started two weeks ago, they continue to grow and show no signs of stopping — a sign that recent police killings in the US have become a rallying call for people worldwide.

Manuel Ellis, a 33-year-old black man from Tacoma, Washington, can be heard screaming, “I can’t breathe” in police dispatcher audio released Friday. The recording was made shortly before Ellis’s death in police custody — and in it, he echoes the words of other black men who were killed during their arrests, like George Floyd and Eric Garner.

Ellis was arrested in Tacoma on March 3; officers said they saw him “trying to open car doors of occupied vehicles,” according to the police department. Officers also said Ellis violently confronted them first, but Sara McDowell, a witness who was in a vehicle behind the arresting officer’s car, told the New York Times the police first provoked Ellis. When Ellis walked up to the police vehicle, an officer knocked him to the ground by opening the car door, she said. Videos recorded by McDowell, released on Friday, show police officers punching Ellis as he lies on the ground and telling him to put his hands behind his back.

“I was terrified for his life, honestly,” McDowell told the Times. “The way that they attacked him didn’t make sense to me. I went home and was sick to my stomach.”

An audio recording of a police dispatch reveals Ellis screaming “I can’t breathe.” It’s unclear what kind of restraints the police used because they weren’t wearing body cameras, the Times reported, but the police report filed about the arrest states officers put a “spit hood” — a mask meant to keep an arrested person from spitting or biting officers — around Ellis’s face. Minutes later, the officers can be heard requesting an ambulance.

Ed Troyer, spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, told KIRO that the officers rolled Elllis to his side when he said he couldn’t breathe. He was still breathing when the medics arrived but died soon after, Troyer said.

A medical examiner’s report ruled Ellis’s death as a homicide on Wednesday after concluding that he had died from a lack of oxygen and physical restraint. The four officers involved in Ellis’s arrest — Christopher Burbank, Masyih Ford, Matthew Collins, and Timothy Rankine — were placed on administrative leave that same day, but none have been charged yet, something Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards has demanded happen.

“The officers who committed this crime should be fired and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Woodards said Friday.

The mayor’s reaction has spurred criticism from the Tacoma police union, which rebuked her in an open statement Thursday for calling the officers “criminals” before the investigation was concluded. And while they acknowledged George Floyd’s death as “repugnant to the badge,” they wrote that Ellis’s death was different.

“But understand; Tacoma is not Minneapolis. The incident involving Mr. Ellis here in Tacoma was not the same as the incident involving Mr. Floyd,” the statement read.

Ellis’s family disagrees, however.

“Manny was taken from me, he was murdered,” Marcia Carter, Manuel Ellis’s mother, said during a Thursday press conference.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department is conducting an independent investigation on the incident, and Gov. Jay Inslee said the state would hold its own investigation afterward.

“We know that Manuel Ellis was one of far, far too many black men who died while in police custody in America, including here in Washington state,” Inslee said. “Washingtonians deserve every assurance that investigations and charging decisions related to police shootings and deaths of people in police custody are handled with urgency, independence and commitment to justice.”

Recent protests have been shedding a light on past police killings

Ellis’s killing comes amid a wave of recorded violence against black men, including the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd. It comes, too, as police violence is under scrutiny due to the police killings of Breonna Taylor, Sean Reed, and others. Those killings have sparked nationwide protests that have led to more police violence — and, to even more attention on killings by law enforcement. So much so, that some in Ellis’s family argue that his killing may have been overlooked if not for those protests.

“If it wasn’t for me and Manny’s friends screaming at the top of lungs and George Floyd dying, this would’ve been swept under the rug,” said Monet Carter-Mixon, Ellis’s sister.

Ellis’s death is not the only police killing gaining nationwide attention amid the demonstrations. In Las Cruces, New Mexico, the death of Antonio “Tony” Valenzuela was declared a homicide caused by an officer’s neck restraint, a medical examiner said on Thursday — months after his death, according to the Las Cruces Sun News.

Valenzuela was running from the police on February 29; he was being chased over an open warrant for a parole violation. When the police caught up to him, an officer used a vascular neck restraint — a variant of the traditional chokehold in which pressure is put on the arteries of a person’s neck — to hold him down. When medics arrived, Valenzuela was already unresponsive, and they declared him dead at the scene.

Following the release of the autopsy report on Thursday, the officer who killed Valenzuela — Christopher Smelser — was terminated (he had already been on administrative leave since the incident) and was charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Momodou Lamin Sisay — a 39-year-old black man who was the son of a retired Gambian diplomat — was fatally shot by the police on May 29, just four days after the death of George Floyd. Officers tried to pull over Sisay’s car due to an apparent tag violation, but Sisay fled the scene, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). After a car chase, Sisay supposedly aimed a gun at police and died after exchanging fire with a SWAT team.

Not all accounts of officers on the scene make mention of Sisay firing a gun, the New York Times notes, and his father has disputed the police’s claim that his son had a weapon — he has also criticized the officers for failing to peacefully resolve the situation.

Abdul Jaiteh, a lawyer for Sisay’s family, has argued the man was killed because he was black.

“We’ve seen standoffs between suspects and police officers that could last for five-plus hours. They give you the benefit of the doubt,” Jaiteh said. “They do everything they can to convince you to surrender to save your life. Black people, we don’t get the same benefit. It’s like in a split second, they will pull the trigger and kill you.”

Gambians have been shocked by Sisay’s death and are joining the growing number of international groups that are protesting against police killings of black people.

“America needs to admit there is an inherent racism problem in this country,” Banka Manneh, a Gambian human rights activist in Atlanta, told the Washington Post. Following Sisay’s death, Gambia has called for a “transparent, credible and objective” investigation. And the country’s embassy in Washington has sent a team of investigators to work with the GBI, which has opened a probe into the case.

Police officers across the country are now under investigation or facing disciplinary action, after viral videos captured their violence against participants in peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.

Countless videos uploaded on social media have documented officers using excessive force against the protesters, who have been marching since last week, following the police killing of George Floyd on May 25. As these videos have spread online, they have further incensed citizens advocating for stricter police regulations, while others are having even more tangible impacts. Some city officials have responded to the videos by opening investigations into the depicted incidents, putting the offending officers on administrative leave, or even terminating them from their positions.

In Buffalo, New York, two officers were suspended without pay on Thursday night after they pushed a 75-year-old man to the ground, an incident which was filmed by a local NPR reporter and subsequently went viral on Twitter. The police initially reported that the man had tripped and fallen on his own, but the video evidence shows otherwise — which sparked immediate outrage. (The man is now in stable but serious condition, according to the city’s mayor.)

Some officers in New York City have also been disciplined for their violence against protesters. One officer was suspended with pay on Friday following an Internal Affairs Bureau investigation, after he was caught pushing a woman to the ground on May 29 in Brooklyn. The officer’s supervisor, who was on the scene but did not intervene, was also “transferred,” according to NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea.

Another NYPD officer stationed in Brooklyn was also suspended without pay after pulling down a protester’s mask and pepper spraying him in the face on May 30. The incident was captured on video and shared to Twitter, where it’s received more than 3 million views so far.

In Atlanta, six police officers were arrested for illegally tasing two college students on May 30. The students were driving when the police stopped them for violating the city’s curfew and repeatedly asked what was going on as the officers opened the car door. The officers then aggressively dragged the students out of the car after tasing them, then slashed their tires and broke the driver’s side window — all of which was captured on air by a local CBS affiliate. Two of the six officers were fired and three were placed on desk duty before prosecutors issued arrest warrants for charges of aggravated assault, illegally pointing a taser, and criminal damage to property against all six officers.

And in Chicago, two officers were relieved of their duties pending an investigation into a violent arrest they made on May 31. A video shared on social media showed police, including the two officers who were disciplined, swarming a car in a mall parking lot and breaking the car windows while dragging people out. One woman was thrown to the ground, and an officer put his knee to her neck — the same restraining method that killed George Floyd. The officers said they had pulled over the car because the passengers had “assembled with three or more persons for the purpose of using force or violence to disturb the peace.” The passengers deny any wrongdoing, NBC Chicago reported.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has now opened an investigation into potential criminal charges, and the FBI is investigating the incident as well, according to State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.

Viral videos have been crucial in keeping the police accountable

Viral videos have been essential in capturing police brutality, particularly as the current wave of Black Lives Matter protests takes hold. One Twitter thread alone, posted by lawyer T. Greg Doucette, shares over 300 examples of police brutality — many of which depict cars running into protesters, the police firing an excessive amount of tear gas, and groups of officers assaulting individuals. The thread has been shared widely, with more than 58,000 retweets.

In recent years, technology has become more essential and accessible to protesters, and almost everyone carries a high-quality camera, thanks to their smartphones. This has made it easier for anyone to capture police brutality, often in real time, since they can easily upload the videos to social media on the spot. Incidents that might have been erased in the past are now recorded for the entire world to see.

“The ability for the public to document what is going on is an important tool for holding powerful people and institutions accountable, including the police,” Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital advocacy group Fight for the Future, told the Washington Post earlier this week regarding the use of cameras by protesters. “The availability of, particularly, smartphone cameras has dramatically increased the number of instances that we see.”

The officers who faced disciplinary action in Chicago, Atlanta, and New York would likely not have been reprimanded if not for the viral videos that captured their misconduct. That’s why so many protesters are filming and uploading scenes from the demonstrations to keep the police accountable.

By now, millions of Americans have seen the videos.

Police officers surrounding protesters, beating them with batons. An officer apparently spraying mace at a little girl. Police cars plowing into a crowd of people, knocking them to the ground.

To many watching, the lesson of such images was clear. As New York Times Magazine writer Carvell Wallace put it, at the protests around the country after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, police aren’t a neutral party. They’re counterprotesters.

As protests spread in the past few days, police have flocked to affected neighborhoods, often wearing riot gear and sometimes arriving hours before protesters. Their stated goal is to keep the peace. But it’s become abundantly clear that many are far from neutral — instead, they are treating protesters like the enemy, lashing out violently, using disproportionate force, and attacking people who pose no threat to them.

“The tone that we felt from the police is: This is their rally,” Dae Shik Kim Jr. told the New York Times. Kim had shared a video of his friend in Seattle who was repeatedly punched while being detained. “They are going to control it from the beginning. They are going to dictate what happens. It’s a very offensive type of approach.”

The thousands of protesters around the country are rising up against police violence as a whole — not just the death of an individual. In response, police appear to be taking the protests personally, and it could lead to a disproportionate amount of violence from officers determined to maintain the status quo.

Around the country, police officers have repeatedly attacked protesters

Since the protests began in response to Floyd’s killing last week, police officers have again and again been captured on video attacking protesters. These videos — many of them graphic and disturbing — often show police seeming to treat protesters like an opposing army, rather than like citizens they’re sworn to protect.

It starts even before the protests do, many say, and continues after they’ve broken up. Police at Barclays Center in Brooklyn showed up well before protesters to surround the facility and create an adversarial image from the very beginning. The officers lined up like soldiers, an intimidating scene that, for many, connoted anything but safety.

In Columbus, Ohio, WOSU reporter Paige Southwick Pfleger spotted armed officers on the roof of a courthouse and blocking a street, even though protesters had already dispersed. “It seems like they are waiting for curfew to take effect,” Pfleger wrote.

And once protests began, police again and again used excessive force against the protesters. In Brooklyn, groups of officers teamed up against individuals and chased them down. Even when it became obvious that a protester was cornered and helpless, officers continued to attack the individual with their batons, making them look “like a literal mob,” wrote journalist Zeeshan Aleem.

Just blocks away, the night before, a police SUV rammed into a crowd of protesters:

Excessive force was also on display in Seattle, where a police officer pinned a protester down with his knee, much the same way an officer killed George Floyd. Bystanders yelled, “Get your knee off his neck,” and his partner ultimately had to push the knee off.

Officials are investigating another incident in Seattle, in which an officer appears to mace a 9-year-old girl — who is clearly not a threat. In a video posted on Twitter, the girl is in distress as other protesters splash her face with milk and water to ease the pain.

Then there are instances of police aggravating the crowd by disrupting peaceful protests, as seen in this video from Dallas:

The violence of police officers at protests reveals their true role

The job of law enforcement officers, according to the authorities who have called on them in recent days, is to keep the public safe. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, for example, said in a press conference on Sunday that officers are “here to protect people and property.”

But the police, in many situations, have appeared to actively work against public safety. It’s hard to imagine how macing a child, or driving a car into a crowd of people, could possibly be intended to keep anyone safe.

Instead, the police seem clearly to be treating protesters — members of the public — as adversaries. As Mara Gay writes at the New York Times, “an army of public servants entrusted to protect Americans treated them as an enemy instead.”

This seems to be happening not despite the fact that the protests are about police brutality, but because of it. Previous research shows that police are more likely to use force against protesters when the subject of the protest is police violence, Shaila Dewan and Mike Baker report at the Times. Police are also more likely to use violence against protesters of color than against white demonstrators.

Now “there’s deep resentment on the part of the police that so many people are angry at them, and they’re lashing out,” Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College, told the Times. “Look at what we saw — people sitting on their own stoops getting hit with pepper balls. Anyone who looks at them funny, they’re attacking them.”

That’s why Wallace, the Times Magazine writer, and others have argued that in protests against police brutality, the police should be seen as counterprotesters. Their interests are fundamentally at odds with those of the protesters, who want to see them stripped of their power to harass, assault, and even kill people with impunity. And it’s clear from the events of recent days that police are willing to use more violence to defend that power.

Many have also compared the violent response to the current protests with police behavior during anti-lockdown protests by conservative groups this spring. At those protests, officers were largely peaceful and respectful toward the (mostly white) crowds. One image from Lansing, Michigan, in particular, went viral: officers stoically standing by as an unmasked white man screamed inches from their faces. Contrast that with the images we’ve seen from recent days, of police swarming and beating protesters or running them down from the safety of their vehicles.

At the time of the Michigan protests, Melanye Price, a political science professor at Prairie View A&M University, told Vox that the police response would be very different if the stay-at-home protesters were black. “Imagine 10 black men and rifles walking up to any state capitol in the United States,” Price said. “They would be shot before they ever made it up the steps.”

The protesters attacked on camera by police in recent days have been unarmed. They certainly haven’t been carrying rifles up the capitol steps. Yet the police have treated them not just like a threat but like an opponent.

It’s clear that for many officers around the country, what’s happening in the streets right now isn’t an effort to protect public safety. It’s war.

Correction, June 2: An earlier version of this story misstated the context for a photo of law enforcement officers in Columbus, Ohio. The officers were standing in a street after a crowd of protesters had dispersed, and before curfew began.