Mostly peaceful Seattle protests turn chaotic at night

SEATTLE (AP) — A fourth day of large protests over the George Floyd killing on Monday in Seattle was largely peaceful but in the night the scene turned chaotic, with police using tear gas and flash bang devices.

Authorities said demonstrators threw fireworks and tried to storm a barricade near a police station, but citizen video posted on Reddit and Facebook showed that the chaos began when an officer grabbed a pink umbrella that a demonstrator was holding just across a barricade. Other officers nearby then began spraying tear gas.

Demonstrators in Washington and around the country have been protesting the killing of Floyd, a black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck until he stopped breathing. On Monday afternoon large crowds of protesters again gathered in downtown Seattle for speeches and to march through the city’s core. Hundreds gathered outside City Hall and the crowd continued to grow as it made its way to the Capitol Hill neighborhood. At one point, video showed officers taking a knee with protesters in Capitol Hill in a show of solidarity.

North of downtown, near the University Village shopping mall, police barricaded a grocery store’s windows after some people smashed them.

In the Capitol Hill neighborhood police declared the protests a riot about 9 p.m., saying the decision was made “after a crowd threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at officers and attempted to breach barricades one block from the East Precinct.”

That explanation drew criticism from protesters and some city leaders. City Council Member Teresa Mosqueda tweeted a link to overhead video taken by a witness and posted on Reddit, which did not show projectiles from the crowd or attempts to breach the barricade in the moments before the chaos began.

Instead, it showed an officer grabbing the umbrella, and other officers using pepper spray as the demonstrator and officer played tug-of-war with it across a metal barrier.

“THIS IS NOT A RIOT,” Mosqueda tweeted.

The police department did not immediately return a message seeking comment Tuesday.

Earlier Monday Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said while the damage from weekend protests that turned violent must be condemned and those responsible prosecuted, “we will not allow that to obscure the justice of the underlying protest.”

Inslee said that people are justifiably outraged following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and emphasized the constitutional right to protest. But he said that “violence and destruction has no place in this.”

“We just can’t allow violence to hijack peaceful protest,” Inslee said at a news conference.