'No justice, no peace': Protests resume in NYC for 4th day

NEW YORK (AP) — A fourth day of protests against police brutality kept New York City on edge Sunday, as thousands of people marched peacefully, and many protesters and officers tried to keep the peace after days of unrest that left police cars burned and hundreds of people under arrest.

Demonstrators marched again through multiple neighborhoods, chanting, kneeling in the street, and falling silent for a minute in front of the neon-adorned NYPD station in Times Square in honor of people killed by police.

Through most of the day, in most of the city, a tense truce appeared to hold, with officers keeping their distance and occasionally dropping to a knee in a gesture of respect, and protesters taking special measures to keep things calm.

But after dark, there were also more ugly confrontations. Demonstrators in downtown Brooklyn and parts of Manhattan pelted officers with objects and set small fires. Officers periodically charged into crowds to make arrests or clear streets, sending people sprawling and sometimes battering bystanders who couldn't get out of the way.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said he had no plans to impose a curfew, unlike other major U.S. cities and smaller cities throughout the state.

De Blasio said city police showed “tremendous restraint overall" during the weekend's protests, but promised an investigation of video showing two police cruisers lurching into a crowd of demonstrators in a Brooklyn street, knocking people to the ground. He appointed two city officials to review how the protests unfolded and how they were handled by the police.

“We all better get back to the humanity here,” de Blasio said Sunday morning. “The protesters are human beings. They need to be treated with tremendous respect. The police officers are human beings. They need to be treated with tremendous respect.”

New York City police said that since the protests began late last week, nearly 790 people have been arrested, 33 officers have been injured and 27 police vehicles have been damaged or destroyed by fire. There were no major injuries reported.

The mayor's own daughter, Chiara de Blasio, 25, was among those arrested during Saturday night's demonstrations, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The arrest report, obtained by the New York Post, said she refused to leave a Manhattan street ordered cleared by officers because people were throwing things. Chiara de Blasio, who is black, was later given a court summons and released.

The mayor didn't mention the arrest in his press briefing Sunday. City Hall spokespeople didn’t have an immediate comment.

Demonstrators marched in many locations throughout the city. At a plaza in downtown Brooklyn, hundreds chanted “No justice, no peace," while making occasional insulting hand gestures at a line of police officers protecting the arena where the NBA’s Nets play.

Marchers chanted “Hands up, don't shoot” — a rallying cry that originated from the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri — during a separate rally in Queens. In Manhattan, hundreds of people marched through the streets then knelt on Fifth Avenue.

Around the city, there were gestures from police officers intended to show sympathy with marchers. A few officers clapped along with protesters in Manhattan. In Queens, uniformed officers took a knee with protesters in a Queens intersection as an organizer called out the names of men and women who have died at the hands of police.

Those gestures didn't always work. Officers mingled with protesters outside Brooklyn's Barclays Center, and two commanders, urged by the crowd to “drop a knee,” did so. But minutes later a small group rushed at a nearby shopping mall, and officers charged into the crowd making arrests in a chaotic scene.

Still, the day's mood was far more peaceful than Saturday, when peaceful marches devolved into numerous clashes between police and protesters and demonstrators set numerous police vehicles on fire and scrawled graffiti on Manhattan's famed St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said some peaceful demonstrations were “hijacked” by people with violent intent.

At a briefing Sunday, the department's top intelligence and counter-terrorism official, John Miller, said that before the protests began, some anarchist groups gathered supplies of rocks and bottles, and used scouts to spot vandalism targets.

New York City lawyers, one of whom went to Princeton, the other to New York University Law School, were hit with federal charges that they threw a Molotov cocktail into an unoccupied patrol car Saturday.

“We’re going to make sure that everyone has the right to peacefully protest and assemble,” Shea said. “But we are not going to tolerate destruction of property, having our officers put into harm’s way or any civilians put into harm’s way."

Similar protests flared around the nation in response to the Minnesota death of George Floyd, a black man who died Monday after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck.

Elsewhere in New York, hundreds of people helped clean up Sunday after shop windows were shattered and vehicles torched in Rochester and Albany and Buffalo.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the National Guard is on standby and that hundreds of additional troopers were made available to upstate cities.

In Schenectady on Sunday afternoon, police marched along with protesters, with some officers holding signs saying “Black lives matter. Period!” Police Chief Eric Clifford and other officers took a knee with protesters. Later, the mayor declared a state of emergency with a 7 p.m. curfew, citing likely civil unrest.

The New York Civil Liberties Union criticized curfews.

“It isn’t the protesters who need curfews, it’s the police. There is no excusing the police terror we have seen this weekend against protesters,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman.

The governor said state Attorney General Letitia James will investigate actions by both NYPD officers and protesters.

At least five burned-out NYPD vehicles that remained near Manhattan's Union Square were towed Sunday afternoon. People walked around broken glass on the street to take pictures of the vehicles. But for hours, Sunday's protests were calm.

“Compared to how things turned out yesterday, this is a lot better. This is exactly how things should be,” said Domenic Manning, who spoke at a rally in Union Square. “If you want to get your point across, this is the way to do it. Vandalizing companies and stores, that’s not the way to do it.”

Ken Kidd, who lives a few blocks south of the park, said protesters and police tried to remain peaceful at the start before the stress of a city heavily hit by the coronavirus came out.

“I think a community can only say ‘Enough’ so many times and the words aren’t heard so then they got to take action and that’s what happened last night. That’s what I watched happen last night,” Kidd said.