Photos: Uprisings across America over George Floyd’s death
Minneapolis police officers were ordered to abandon their posts as protests demanding justice for George Floyd intensified on May 28. | Julio Cortez/AP
From Minneapolis to New York City.
“Please, please, I can’t breathe, officer,” a man pleads, his wrists handcuffed behind his back, his face ground into the pavement. The police officer continues to press his knee into the man’s neck. The man, 46-year-old George Floyd, died later that day. Floyd was black; the cop, white.
But demonstrations later turned tense and sometimes violent. Police fired tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and rubber bullets at demonstrators. Rioters vandalized and looted local businesses. People scaled the walls of a police precinct and set it aflame. (The station was evacuated before protesters entered and started the fire.)
In Louisville, Kentucky, protesters chanted “no justice, no peace” for Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black healthcare worker who was fatally shot by police in her Louisville apartment in March. The peaceful protests in Louisville also escalated, and at least seven people were shot. Police said no officers discharged their weapons.
The rage over the deaths of Floyd, and Taylor may have ignited these uprisings, but the scenes below are a reminder that this is pent-up in a country where violence against black people keeps happening.
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota
Louisville, Kentucky
Columbus, Ohio
New York City
Denver, Colorado
Los Angeles, California
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