AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
Atlanta police chief resigns after fatal police shooting
ATLANTA (AP) — Atlanta's police chief resigned Saturday hours after a black man was fatally shot by an officer in a struggle following a field sobriety test. Authorities said the slain man had grabbed an officer's Taser, but was running away when he was shot.
Police Chief Erika Shields stepped down as the killing of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks sparked a new wave of protests in Atlanta after turbulent demonstrations that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis had simmered down.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the police chief's resignation at a Saturday news conference as roughly 150 people marched outside the Wendy's restaurant where Brooks was fatally shot late Friday. The mayor also called for the immediate firing of the unidentified officer who opened fire at Brooks.
“I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force and have called for the immediate termination of the officer," Bottoms said.
She said it was Shields' own decision to step aside as police chief and that she would remain with the city in an undetermined role. Interim Corrections Chief Rodney Bryant would serve as interim police chief until a permanent replacement is found.
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Protesters call attention to deaths of two more black men
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Anti-racism protesters on Saturday sought to call attention to the deaths of two more black men — one who was found hanging from a tree in California and another who was fatally shot by police outside an Atlanta restaurant. The Atlanta police chief resigned hours later.
Meanwhile in Europe, far-right activists scuffled with police in London and Paris as more Black Lives Matter demonstrations unfolded nearly three weeks after George Floyd, another black man, died at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer who pressed a knee to his neck.
Atlanta police were called late Friday about a man said to be sleeping in a car blocking a Wendy’s restaurant drive-thru. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was investigating reports that 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks failed a sobriety test and was shot in a struggle over a police Taser.
By Saturday evening, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced that she had accepted the resignation of Police Chief Erika Shields. The announcement came as roughly 150 protesters marched outside the restaurant. The mayor also called for the immediate firing of the officer who opened fire on Brooks.
“I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force,” Bottoms said.
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As US seethes over race, Trump calls out 'evil of slavery'
WEST POINT. N.Y. (AP) — As the nation continues to grapple with its racial past, President Donald Trump urged West Point's graduating class Saturday to “never forget” the legacy of soldiers before them who fought a bloody war to “extinguish the evil of slavery.”
Trump's appeal to remember history came as his own relationship with the military is under strain from the unrelenting criticism he and Pentagon leaders have faced over their response to protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
It also came hours after Trump made what amounted to a rare concession for him: He rescheduled a campaign rally planned for Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19. The day marks the end of slavery in the U.S., and Tulsa was the scene of a fiery white-on-black attack in 1921.
“What has historically made America unique is the durability of its institutions against the passions and prejudices of the moment,” Trump told more than 1,100 graduates at an unusual outdoor ceremony held during a pandemic. “When times are turbulent, when the road is rough, what matters most is that which is permanent, timeless, enduring and eternal.”
In the past two weeks, Trump has yelled at Defense Secretary Mark Esper for publicly opposing his call to deploy active-duty troops to quell the protests stemming from the killing of Floyd, who was black, by a white Minneapolis police officer.
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Mississippi faces reckoning on Confederate emblem in flag
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The young activists who launched a protest movement after George Floyd’s death are bringing fresh energy to a long-simmering debate about the Confederate battle emblem that white supremacists embedded within the Mississippi state flag more than 125 years ago.
Anti-racism protests have toppled Confederate statues and monuments across the United States in recent days, and even NASCAR banned the display of the rebel flag. But Mississippi has been a holdout for years in displaying the emblem in the upper-left corner of its banner.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves rejects the idea of a legislative vote on erasing the symbol. If the flag is to be redesigned, "it should be the people who make that decision, not some backroom deal by a bunch of politicians in Jackson,” Reeves said this week.
The mere mention of removing the Confederate emblem from the Mississippi flag stirs anger in its defenders, who tell people to leave the state if they don’t like it.
The issue has gained new momentum since Floyd was killed last month by Minneapolis police. Thousands of people turned out June 6 in downtown Jackson for a protest organized by Black Lives Matter. One of the organizers, 18-year-old Maisie Brown, read a list of demands that started with “the removal of all Confederate symbols and memorabilia.”
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Baseball players say talks futile, tell MLB to order return
NEW YORK (AP) — Baseball players told Major League Baseball additional talks to start the season during the coronavirus pandemic are pointless and said owners should order a return to work, which likely would spark lengthy litigation and the sport's return to labor wars.
The union's action Saturday night could lead to a season of about 50 games rather than the 82 initially proposed by MLB. The Major League Baseball Players Association could respond by filing a grievance that would be heard by arbitrator Mark Irvings, arguing players are owed hundreds of millions of dollars in damages due to a shorter season.
“It unfortunately appears that further dialogue with the league would be futile,” union head Tony Clark said in a statement. “It’s time to get back to work. Tell us when and where.”
There was no immediate response from MLB.
While the NBA, NHL and MLS have figured out deals to return in this summer of the coronavirus, baseball has descended into the fractious labor strife that led to eight work stoppages from 1972-95. The union has seethed followed a collective bargaining agreement in late 2016 that led to relatively flat salaries for five straight years, an unsuccessful grievance accusing the Chicago Cubs of manipulating third baseman Kris Bryant's service time to delay his eligibility for free agency and a grievance accusing teams of improperly using revenue sharing proceeds, a process the union calls “tanking.”
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Georgia nursing staff back with family after virus lockdown
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. (AP) — Nadia Williams shrieked with surprise and emotion Saturday as she embraced her mother for the first time since agreeing nearly three months ago to live at the elder-care facility where she works.
Park Springs just outside Atlanta took the unusual approach of having roughly 70 employees shelter in place on campus to protect its residents from the coronavirus. It lifted that restriction over the weekend, and Williams and other employees headed home for the first time since March 30.
“It shocked me a lot,” Williams, 30, said about seeing her mom. “I didn’t think I was going to be able to see them for another few weeks.”
Nursing homes — among the hardest hit places by the pandemic — have limited visitors and screened people for the virus. Park Springs’ administrators said they feared those strategies might not be enough to keep their more than 500 residents safe. But the staff lockdown was not a measure they could sustain forever, said Donna Moore, chief operating officer of the company that owns Park Springs.
“This is week eleven,” Moore said on a Zoom call Wednesday.
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Kim Jong Un's sister threatens S. Korea with military action
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened military action against South Korea as she bashed Seoul on Saturday over declining bilateral relations and its inability to stop activists from floating anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.
Describing South Korea as an “enemy,” Kim Yo Jong repeated an earlier threat she had made by saying Seoul will soon witness the collapse of a “useless” inter-Korean liaison office in the border town of Kaesong.
Kim, who is first vice department director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, said she would leave it to North Korea’s military leaders to carry out the next step of retaliation against the South.
“By exercising my power authorized by the supreme leader, our party and the state, I gave an instruction to the arms of the department in charge of the affairs with enemy to decisively carry out the next action,” she said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
“If I drop a hint of our next plan the (South Korean) authorities are anxious about, the right to taking the next action against the enemy will be entrusted to the General Staff of our army,” she said. “Our army, too, will determine something for cooling down our people’s resentment and surely carry out it, I believe.”
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Bars reopening in New Orleans. Will tourists come?
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Bar owners in New Orleans prepared for a soft opening, and an uncertain one, as they began letting customers in Saturday for the first time in months. Capacity is limited to 25 percent, live music remains prohibited, and nobody knows how many tourists will show on Bourbon Street in the age of COVID-19.
Pam Fortner, owner of six French Quarter venues, is opening only two of them, both on Bourbon, where the customary blocks-long frat party atmosphere ended in an abrupt shutdown in mid-March.
Now, she's not sure what to expect. She sat at a sidewalk table at Royal and St. Ann on Thursday, eating a Caesar salad and deriving hope from the occasional out-of-state license plate she saw amid sparse traffic.
“I think Saturday will be busy,” she said in an interview.
Cherie Boos, manager of Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, in an authentically rustic, creaky floored 18th-century Creole cottage, said she's hoping locals will help keep the bar financially afloat as Bourbon Street revives. But she adds, “We’re hoping that, you know, we can start generating some tourists in the city, too, now that the bars are going to be open.”
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Dear white people: Being an ally isn't always what you think
NEW YORK (AP) — In one video clip, a black man kneels in front of a line of police, then one by one young white men move in as shields, human barriers between him and the law.
In another, a black woman yells at two white women spray-painting a Starbucks shop with “BLM,” — Black Lives Matter — telling them to stop, that vandalism isn’t helping.
Variations of both scenes have played out around the country many times in the more than two weeks of protests following the killing of George Floyd by police. They raise the issue: For white people wanting to be part of an anti-racist movement, what does it mean to be an ally?
As a new generation steps up, activists and historians believe there’s important work to be done for white people: Listening to black voices and following rather than trying to lead, for one, and undertaking the deep introspection required to confront unconscious bias and the perks of privilege that come just from being white.
White people have played necessary roles in racial justice movements through time, from abolition to the civil rights era of the 1950s and ’60s, said Mark Warren, a professor of public policy and public affairs at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
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Officer charged in Floyd's death eligible for pension money
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is eligible to receive pension benefits during his retirement years even if he's convicted of killing George Floyd, according to the Minnesota agency that represents retired public workers.
Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter in the May 25 death of George. Video of the arrest shows Chauvin, who is white, using his knee to pin down the neck of George, who was black and handcuffed, for several minutes as Floyd pleaded for air and eventually stopped moving. George's death has sparked protests around the world.
The Minnesota Public Employees Retirement Association said in a statement that former employees who meet length-of-service requirements qualify for benefits regardless of whether they quit or are fired. Those payments are not affected by criminal charges or convictions, the agency said, citing state law.
A review of police payroll, salary and contract information obtained by CNN estimates that Chauvin's annual payments would be around $50,000 or more if he elected to begin receiving distributions at age 55. Chauvin was a member of the Minneapolis police force for 19 years.
Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, did not immediately return an email request seeking comment.