George Floyd protests: Number of US arrests tops 10,000

Cities crack down on demonstrations with Los Angeles leading the way

The number of people arrested over the last week at demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd has passed 10,000.

According to a tally by the Associated Press, Los Angeles has seen the most arrests, with about a quarter of the total. The only other US city with an arrest toll that comes close is New York, with about 2,000.

Los Angeles Chief Michel Moore told the city’s Police Commission Tuesday the bulk of the arrests, about 2,500, were for failure to disperse or curfew violations. The rest, he said, were for crimes including burglary, looting, assaults on police officers and other violence.

Many of the arrests have been for low-level offences such as curfew violations and failure to disperse, with of others arrested on burglary and looting charges. The count has grown by hundreds each day, as protesters spilling into the streets in their thousands meet with a heavy police presence and curfews that give law enforcement stepped-up arrest powers.

As cities were engulfed in unrest last week, various politicians claimed that the majority of the protesters were outside agitators. Minnesota’s governor declared last week that 80 percent of the participants in the demonstrations were from out of state. However, the figures from a frenzied weekend in Minneapolis tell a different story.

According to the Hennepin County sheriff, from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon, 41 of the 52 people cited with protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver’s licenses. The mayor of St Paul has said that the 80 per cent figure he heard came from a police briefing that turned out to be inaccurate.

In the nation’s capital, 86 percent of the more than 400 people arrested as of Wednesday afternoon were from Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia.

It is not known how many of the people arrested were locked up, a problem at a time when many of the nation’s jails are dealing with coronavirus outbreaks. The protesters are often placed in zip-ties and hauled away from the scene in buses.

Demonstrators raise their fists during a Sit Out the Curfew in Oakland, California (AFP via Getty Images)

Numerous incidents of police brutality have been captured on video at the protests. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, an unarmed man was first sprayed with mace and then shot in the head with a tear cas canister at nearly point blank range.

The Trump administration is considering whether to deploy army troops to crack down on protesters, and has brought National Guard troops to Washington, DC to supplement the local police force.

Other law enforcement agents without uniforms or insignia were amassed by the White House yesterday; they declined to specifically identify themselves to protesters, but some appear to have come from Bureau of Prisons Crisis Management teams.

With Associated Press