Mayor Says NYPD Incidents Being Investigated, Curfew an Option

(Bloomberg) -- New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said police vehicles shouldn’t have driven into a crowd of protesters and an officer who drew his gun should have his badge taken away.

The mayor said the majority of weekend protests across the most populous U.S. city were peaceful, and most officers handled crowds with restraint and respect. Some late-evening protests included people from outside the city and were not peaceful or acceptable, and led to some looting in lower Manhattan, the mayor said. A curfew is an option, but is not planned for tonight, he said.

It is “not acceptable ever” to drive a police vehicle into a crowd, and the matter is under investigation, de Blasio said Monday at a press briefing. Over the weekend, de Blasio had said the police who drove into the crowds were wrong, but that the protesters had created conditions for the incident.

Violence erupted in cities across the U.S. over George Floyd, a black Minneapolis man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes. The officer has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. The incident has similarities to the 2014 New York City incident with Eric Garner, who died after a white officer used a prohibited chokehold to subdue the unarmed black man. The officer was fired in 2019. That incident helped spark the national Black Lives Matter movement.

De Blasio said the police discipline process must be sped up, and a state law that shields officers’ disciplinary records should be repealed. Officers “who hold racism in their heart” don’t belong in the NYPD, the mayor said.

The mayor also said his 25-year-old daughter was arrested during a Saturday night protest and told him she was acting in a peaceful manner. He said he would let her speak for herself. “I admire that she was out there trying to change something that she thought was unjust,” he said.

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