by Tim Sullivan and Amy Forliti — 

MINNEAPOLIS — The police officer seen on video kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died in custody after pleading that he could not breathe, was arrested Friday after three days of often-violent protests that resulted in fires and looting across parts of Minneapolis.

Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington said state investigators arrested Derek Chauvin, who was one of four officers fired this week, but he did not provide details. The state attorney who would oversee any prosecution on state charges, whose home was also the site of protests, was scheduled to provide an update later Friday.

News of the arrest came moments after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz acknowledged the “abject failure” of the response to this week’s protests and called for swift justice for officers involved. Walz said the state would take over the response to the protests and that it’s time to show respect and dignity to those who are suffering.

“Minneapolis and St. Paul are on fire. The fire is still smoldering in our streets. The ashes are symbolic of decades and generations of pain, of anguish unheard,” Walz said, adding. “Now generations of pain is manifesting itself in front of the world — and the world is watching.”

The governor cited a call he received from a state senator who described her district “on fire, no police, no firefighters, no social control, constituents locked in houses wondering what they were going to do. That is an abject failure that cannot happen.”

His comments came the morning after protesters torched a police station that officers abandoned during a third night of violence. Livestream video showed protesters entering the building, where intentionally set fires activated smoke alarms and sprinklers. President Donald Trump threatened action, tweeting “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” which prompted a warning from Twitter for “glorifying violence.”

The governor faced tough questions after National Guard leader Maj. Gen. Jon Jensen blamed a lack of clarity about the Guard’s mission for a slow response. Walz said the state was in a supporting role and that it was up to city leaders to run the situation. Walz said it became apparent as the 3rd Precinct was lost that the state had to step in, which happened at 12:05 a.m. Requests from the cities for resources “never came,” he said.

“You will not see that tonight, there will be no lack of leadership,” Walz said.

On Friday morning, nearly every building in the shopping district around the abandoned police station had been vandalized, burned or looted. National Guard members were in the area, with several of them lined up, keeping people away from the police station.

Dozens of volunteers swept up broken glass in the street, doing what they could to help.

Dean Hanson, 64, lives in a subsidized housing unit nearby, which is home to many older residents. He said his building lost electricity overnight, and residents were terrified as they watched mobs of people run around their neighborhood, with no apparent intervention.

“I can’t believe this is happening here,” he said.

Dozens of fires were also set in nearby St. Paul, where nearly 200 businesses were damaged or looted. Protests spread across the U.S., fueled by outrage over Floyd’s death, and years of violence against African Americans at the hands of police. Demonstrators clashed with officers in New York and blocked traffic in Columbus, Ohio, and Denver.

Trump threatened to bring Minneapolis “under control,” calling the protesters “thugs” and tweeting that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The tweet drew another warning from Twitter, which said the comment violated the platform’s rules, but the company did not remove it.

by Amy Forliti and Jeff Baenen — 

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — To the general public, the video of a white police officer pressing his knee into the neck of a black man prone on the street, crying out for help until he finally stopped moving, was horrifying.

Four officers were fired a day after George Floyd’s death, a stunning and swift move by the Minneapolis chief with the mayor’s full backing. But despite their dismissal, whether the incident will be considered criminal, or even excessive force, is a more complicated question that will likely take months to investigate.

The officers were dismissed soon after a bystander’s video taken outside a south Minneapolis grocery store Monday night showed an officer kneeling on the handcuffed man’s neck, even after he pleaded that he could not breathe and stopped moving. Floyd’s death prompted protests Tuesday, with thousands taking to the streets at the intersection where he died.

Many protesters marched more than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) to the police precinct station in that part of the city, with some damaging the building’s windows and squad cars and spraying graffiti. Police in riot gear eventually confronted them with tear gas and projectiles, with tense skirmishes stretching late into the evening.

Mayor Jacob Frey announced the firings on Twitter, saying: “This is the right call.”

The FBI and state law enforcement were investigating Floyd’s death, which immediately drew comparisons to the case of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died in 2014 in New York after he was placed in a chokehold by police and pleaded for his life, saying he could not breathe.

But in the Garner case, local prosecutors, the NYPD’s internal affairs unit, and the Justice Department all finished investigations into the case before the officer was ultimately fired. Garner’s family and activists spent years begging for the officer to be removed.

The officers in the Minneapolis incident haven’t even been publicly identified, though one defense attorney has confirmed he is representing Derek Chauvin, the officer seen with his knee on Floyd’s neck. The attorney, Tom Kelly, declined to comment further.

The police union asked the public to wait for the investigation to take its course and not to “rush to judgment and immediately condemn our officers.” Messages left with the union after the firings were not returned.

During Tuesday’s protests, some chanted and carried banners that read, “I can’t breathe” and “Jail killer KKKops.” And some stacked shopping carts to make a barricade at a Target store across the street from the station.

Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said the department would conduct a full internal investigation, and prosecutors will decide whether to file criminal charges against the officers involved. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said it was “shocked and saddened” by the video and pledged to handle the case fairly. Part of that investigation will likely focus on the intent of the officers, whether they meant to harm Floyd or whether it was a death that happened in the course of police work. The FBI was investigating whether the officers willfully deprived Floyd of his civil rights.

News accounts show Chauvin was one of six officers who fired their weapons in the 2006 death of Wayne Reyes, who police said pointed a sawed-off shotgun at officers after stabbing two people. Chauvin also shot and wounded a man in 2008 during a struggle after Chauvin and his partner responded to a reported domestic assault. Police did not immediately respond to a request for Chauvin’s service record.

In Minneapolis, kneeling on a suspect’s neck is allowed under the department’s use-of-force policy for officers who have received training in how to compress a neck without applying direct pressure to the airway. It is considered a “non-deadly force option,” according to the department’s policy handbook.

A chokehold is considered a deadly force option and involves someone obstructing the airway. According to the department’s use-of-force policy, officers are to use only an amount of force necessary that would be objectively reasonable.

But two use-of-force experts told The Associated Press that the officer clearly restrained the man too long, noting that the man was under control and no longer fighting. Andrew Scott, a former Boca Raton, Florida, police chief who now testifies as an expert witness in use-of-force cases, called Floyd’s death “a combination of not being trained properly or disregarding their training.”

“He couldn’t move. He was telling them he couldn’t breathe, and they ignored him,” Scott said. “I can’t even describe it. It was difficult to watch.”

In a post on his Facebook page, the mayor, who is white, apologized Tuesday to the black community for the officer’s treatment of Floyd, 46, who worked security at a restaurant.

“Being Black in America should not be a death sentence. For five minutes, we watched a white officer press his knee into a Black man’s neck. Five minutes. When you hear someone calling for help, you’re supposed to help. This officer failed in the most basic, human sense,” Frey posted.

Police said the man matched the description of a suspect in a forgery case at a grocery store, and that he resisted arrest.

The video starts with the man on the ground, and does not show what happened in the moments prior. The unidentified officer is kneeling on his neck, ignoring his pleas. “Please, please, please, I can’t breathe. Please, man,” said Floyd, who has his face against the pavement.

Even in the coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly 100,000 people in the U.S. and prompted police departments around the country to change how they’re doing work, the officers in the video aren’t wearing masks. In some cities, low-level arrests such as attempted forgery are skipped right now.

Floyd also moans. One of the officers tells him to “relax.” Floyd calls for his mother and says: “My stomach hurts, my neck hurts, everything hurts … I can’t breathe.” As bystanders shout their concern, one officer says, “He’s talking, so he’s breathing.”

But Floyd slowly becomes motionless under the officer’s restraint. The officer does not remove his knee until the man is loaded onto a gurney by paramedics.

Several witnesses had gathered on a nearby sidewalk, some recording the scene on their phones. The bystanders become increasingly agitated. One man yells repeatedly. “He’s not responsive right now!” Two witnesses, including one woman who said she was a Minneapolis firefighter, yell at the officers to check the man’s pulse. “Check his pulse right now and tell me what it is!” she said.

At one point, an officer says: “Don’t do drugs, guys.” And one man yells, “Don’t do drugs, bro? What is that? What do you think this is?”

The Hennepin County medical examiner identified Floyd but said the cause of death was pending.

Floyd had worked security for five years at a restaurant called Conga Latin Bistro and rented a home from the restaurant’s owner, Jovanni Thunstrom.

He was “a good friend, person and a good tenant,” the restaurateur told the Star Tribune. “He was family. His co-workers and friends loved him.”

Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights and personal injury attorney, said he had been hired by Floyd’s family.

The death came amid outrage over the death of Ahmaud Arbery, who was fatally shot Feb. 23 in Georgia after a white father and son pursued the 25-year-old black man they had spotted running in their subdivision. More than two months passed before charges were brought. Crump also represents Arbery’s father.

(Associated Press writers Gretchen Ehlke in Milwaukee and Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.)

By Hazel Trice Edney —

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – A recent NAACP “Black Media Speaks” forum plummeted into a conversation in which the future of hard-copy, black-owned newspapers was all but pronounced dead.

To the shock of some of the members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), A federation of more than 200 black-owned newspapers, there was not one black newspaper journalist or publisher on the panel.

“In 2020, for there to be a virtual panel on Black Media and not invite or involve the NNPA or any of our member publishers to be on the panel goes beyond a mere oversight,” said NNPA President/CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis in an interview about the May 20 forum. “We’re certainly going to meet about it as part of our ongoing strategic alliance between the NAACP and the NNPA.”

Hosted by NAACP President/CEO Derrick Johnson and moderated by journalist Ed Gordon of Ed Gordon Media, formerly of BET, the forum had been widely promoted by the NAACP as a discussion on the need for Black media during the coronavirus pandemic and continued physical attacks on black people by police and others. Those topics were barely mentioned during the entire hour.

Chavis was particularly taken-aback by remarks from panelists who painted a grim picture about the future of black newspapers. Perhaps most notably were comments by Earl “Butch” Graves, president/CEO of Black Enterprise Magazine.

Graves was responding to a caller who identified herself as a second-generation publisher among those still “on the front line”. She asked how members of the panel would use their positions to support black print publications.

At first, Gordon responded briefly: “This is all about survival at this point.” Gordon mentioned how he’d worked closely with Real Times Media CEO Hiram Jackson to assure the survival of several of his black-owned newspapers – such as the Michigan Chronicle and the Chicago Defender – now fully online. Then Graves weighed in heavily.

“We can’t be tone deaf though,” Graves said. “The reality is it’s like those that are in retail that thought that retail would always survive…Print is not going to survive. It will not be here five years from now. That’s a hard pill to swallow but it is a reality. So, either you reinvent or you die. And the reality is that now black-owned media companies need to accept that cold hard fact.”

Dorothy Tucker, president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and a long time reporter for CBS, Channel 2 in Chicago, had stated earlier that there are “170 African-American newspapers that still exist.” And, she said, “It is critical that we as African-Americans support black-owned media,” including historic black newspapers that fought for the freedom of black people and continue to do so.

Underscoring the need for a black newspaper representative on the panel, Chavis said Tucker’s number, 170, was inaccurate. Based on the NNPA member papers received at the D.C.-based NNPA headquarters, he said, there are 220 NNPA newspapers in print and 10 online publications that are Black-owned.

Following up on Tucker’s point, Graves continued, “We probably don’t need 176 – or whatever the number is exactly, Dorothy…We will probably need less than that. But those will have to survive doing it a different way. You cannot continue to print and survive…We can see this right now. Print will not survive. Therefore, we will have to do something in a different capacity to make this work.”

Chavis reflected on the videotaped forum. “It was like our epitaph. They were having the funeral, the eulogy, and the final rites.” But, he noted, this is historically how the Black Press has been treated.

“For 193 years, the black-owned press, since the days of Freedom’s Journal, has faced the negative speculative and false analysis – not just from white supremacists about the value of the Black Press – but sometimes the history will show that at one point some of our own people also attempted to undervalue the purpose, the mission, and the sustainability of the Black Press.

“By analogy, this is the same argument that people have said about HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and the same questions about the need for the continuation of the historic black church,” Chavis said.

“If there’s any person of African dissent who does not know the value of the black-owned church, black-owned HBCUs (and) black-owned newspapers, then that person or group of people of African descent needs to re-immerse themselves in the history and the long struggle of African people to build our own institutions, to build our own businesses, and to have our own voice in all of the media platforms – print, digital, online and social media.”

Denise Rolark Barnes, publisher of the Washington (DC) Informer newspaper and former NNPA chair, emailed a letter expressing “disgust” about the forum to NAACP Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications Aba Blankson.

She wrote that the Informer staff felt “consistent disrespect by the NAACP and NABJ. They shared their observations about how often black journalists are featured in discussions about Black Media, who have never worked for the Black Press.”

Barnes continued, “Understandably, we are all bewildered about why the nation’s oldest civil rights organization would allow a discussion [about] Black media ownership without having someone from the nation’s oldest black media ownership organization – the NNPA – at the table. This happens all too often, and I join my colleagues in expressing my disgust.”

Readers know and the NAACP is “ignorant of”  how the Black Press is growing more robust even in the midst of COVID-19, Barnes wrote.

“We are the ones on the ground, bringing to life the stories of how COVID-19 is affecting Black communities across the country. We are telling the under-reported stories of our survival despite an administration that has abandoned us, and organizations – including the NAACP – that ignores us. In print, we report these stories weekly, but online, we publish them every day.”

Blankson responded the next day, directing a letter to Barnes, Chavis, NNPA Senior National Correspondent Stacy Brown, and the “NNPA Family.” Both letters were copied to the Trice Edney News Wire.

“Our partnership with the NNPA is important to us,” Blankson wrote. “We value our shared engagements and take pride in sharing articles from the Washington Informer, Afro, Defender and others in the weekly news recaps distributed to our networks. While it was not our intent to exclude you, I recognize that was the impact.”

Blankson said the Black Media Speaks forum was one of several events planned for this year. “In addition to NNPA, there are other voices we must include in future conversations, especially those about media. I want to use this moment to strengthen our relationship.”

She offered to “work together to plan an NNPA /NAACP specific event in the coming weeks.”

Blankson did not explain how or why members of NNPA or other reporters for black newspapers were not invited to the “Black Media Speaks” panel. Neither did NAACP President Johnson respond to repeated requests for an interview.

During the panel, NAACP President Johnson also took the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine, a quarterly print publication, to task.

“It’s been in continuous publication,” he said. “But it’s not timely. And we have to recognize that until we can develop the publication to where people can consume it in this new media reality – that they see the value in it – I can’t fault others for not investing in Crisis when we have not kept up with the times. That’s the reality across the board when we’re talking about Black media.”

Johnson said the Crisis has survived mainly because it’s been underwritten. “Because if it had to stand up on its own, it would have been out of business 50 years ago. So, we have to figure out a new business model to keep it moving.”

Graves said his late father, Earl Graves Sr., would not understand the decision he has now made to move Black Enterprise almost completely online. But, he said, it has been done with great success and an astronomical increase in readership.

Other members of the Black Media Speaks panel were Jeff Johnson, formerly of BET and currently of the “Rickey Smiley Morning Show”; April Ryan, White House correspondent, American Urban Radio Network, and CNN political analyst; and Jemele Hill, writer for the Atlantic and host of her own podcast, “Jemele Hill Unbothered.”

Near the close of the discussion, Gordon told the panel that he had an idea that he would be floating with each of them soon and he hopes at least a couple of them would agree. He did not say publicly what the idea is.

Chavis, noting that is “a loyal and life-member of the NAACP,” expressed his conviction that the matter will be worked out.

“Both the NNPA and the NAACP need to be made stronger together by working together to help improve the overall quality of life of Black Americans and all others who cry out for freedom, justice and equality. Thus, the NNPA does not accept the eulogy, the final rites or the epitaphs that are now being untimely articulated by people who should know better.”

NOTE: The New Tri-State Defender is a member of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

by Aaron Morrison —

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — He was at a crossroads, his life stretching out before him, his troubles largely behind him. He had enrolled at South Georgia Technical College, preparing to become an electrician, just like his uncles. But first, he decided, he would take a break. College could wait until the fall.

To help keep his head clear, he ran, just about every day. Off he’d go, out of the doors of his mother’s house, down the long street toward Fancy Bluff Road. Then would come the right turn onto the two-lane road lined by oak trees draped with Spanish moss.

About a mile and a half into his usual route, Ahmaud Arbery would cross the four lanes of Jekyll Island Causeway into the subdivision of Satilla Shores.

Three months ago, at the age of 25, he ran through Satilla Shores for the final time.

On Feb. 23, Arbery was shot to death by a father and son who told police they grabbed guns and pursued him in a pickup truck because they believed he was responsible for break-ins in their neighborhood — a black man, killed by two white men.

A makeshift memorial of flowers now rests on the lawn of a house near where he died, along with a plaque reading, “It’s hard to forget someone who gave us so much to remember.”

Before Arbery’s name joined a litany of hashtags bearing young black men’s names, he was a skinny kid whose dreams of an NFL career didn’t pan out. Those who knew him speak of a seemingly bottomless reservoir of kindness he used to encourage others, of an easy smile and infectious laughter that could lighten just about any situation.

In his final months on Earth, Arbery appeared to be someone who felt on the verge of personal and professional breakthroughs, especially because his probation could have ended this year, many of those close to him told The Associated Press.

His mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, accepted that he was a young adult living at home, like so many of his contemporaries, taking a breather to chart how he’d one day support himself.

She had one rule: “If you have the energy to run the roads, you need to be on the job.”

So he worked at his father’s car wash and landscaping business, and previously had held a job at McDonald’s.

As a teenager, he stuck to the family home so markedly that his family worried he never wanted to go out with friends. “And I was like, he’ll get to the stage eventually,” Cooper-Jones said. ’He was a mama’s boy at first.”

As his mother predicted, that reserve was left behind when Arbery entered Brunswick High School’s Class of 2012.

He took cues from his brother, Marcus Jr., and tried out for the Brunswick Pirates football team. His slender build certainly didn’t make him a shoo-in for linebacker on the junior varsity squad, said Jason Vaughn, his former coach and a U.S. history teacher at the school.

“As soon as practice started and Ahmaud started to really go, oh man, his speed was amazing,” Vaughn recalled with a laugh. “He was undersized, but his heart was huge.”

Off the field, Ahmaud had a talent for raising the spirits of the people around him — and a penchant for imitating his coach, Vaughn said.

“If I was standing in the hallway, kind of looking mean or having a bad day — maybe my lesson plan didn’t go right — Maud could kind of sense that about me,” Vaughn said. “He’d come stand beside me and be like, ‘I’m Coach Vaughn today. Y’all keep going to class. Hurry up, hurry up! Don’t be tardy! Don’t be late!’ That’s what I loved about him. He was always trying to make people smile.”

“Some students it’s hard to get mad at,” he said, “because you love them so much.”

At the end of his final football season, no college recruiters tried to woo No. 21. But Arbery’s high school football career still finished on a high note, his mother remembers.

In his final game, he intercepted a pass and ran the ball back to score a touchdown. A referee threw a flag on the play, but his mother insisted that his accomplishment still mattered: “I said, ‘Guess what, son? You did it!’ And he was very, very excited about it. That was a very good moment for us.”

Former teammate Demetrius Frazier grew up just down the street from the Arberys, and his friendship with Ahmaud dated back to their days in a local pee-wee football program.

Frazier treasures their quieter moments in high school — just two friends playing video games, shooting hoops, wolfing down peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hot dogs and chips.

Those were the times his friend seemed happiest, Frazier said, before his legal troubles bogged him down.

Frazier went on to play wide receiver for Middle Tennessee State University’s football team and now holds down an office job and is raising a son in nearby Darien, Georgia.

Arbery’s own football aspirations had been dashed, but he still wanted so much for himself, Frazier said.

“Ahmaud was just ready to put himself in a position to be where he wanted to be in life,” he said. “That’s what they took from him.”

Less than two weeks before Arbery was killed, 34-year-old Travis McMichael had called 911 to report a possible trespasser inside a house under construction in the subdivision, describing him as “a black male, red shirt and white shorts” and saying he feared the person was armed.

The Arbery family’s attorneys have confirmed that Ahmaud was captured on security cameras entering that home on the day he was killed. The property owner said nothing appeared to have been stolen, however, and surveillance footage also shows other people coming in and out of the construction site on other days, some apparently to access a water source on the property.

Travis McMichael and his 64-year-old father Gregory McMichael — a former police officer and retired investigator for the Glynn County district attorney — were charged with murder and aggravated assault on May 7, a day before Arbery would have turned 26.

Their arrests were sought by state law enforcement authorities after cellphone video of the shooting taken by another man at the scene was released to a local radio station. Gregory McMichael told police that Arbery attacked his son and then was shot in a struggle over Travis’ shotgun.

On Thursday, state authorities arrested the man who filmed Arbery’s killing, William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., on charges of felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment. His attorney has said Bryan bears no criminal responsibility for Arbery’s death.

For Arbery’s family, the pain of his loss is magnified by his final moments being captured on video.

“I didn’t want to watch it. I didn’t want my children to watch anything like that, to see their brother get killed,” said Ahmaud’s father, Marcus Arbery Sr., who noted that at least one of Ahmaud’s siblings viewed the footage. “My daughter, she called me and broke down crying. They just turned my family upside down.”

Cooper-Jones has said she believes her son was simply out for a jog when he encountered the men who had profiled him as a burglar. Their rush to judgment speaks to a larger problem of bias against young black men and boys, she said.

“I think that when he went into the property, he probably was looking to see how they were going to run the wire … or how he would do the job if it was one of his assignments,” she said, referring to his plan to become an electrician.

Lee Merritt, one of the Arbery family’s civil rights attorneys, said the circumstances of Ahmaud’s life touch on something deeper about American society.

“Our ravenous criminal justice system tends to take young black men in their teenage years, introduces them to the system and never lets them out again,” he said. But when Ahmaud died, “he was at a point of transition.”

His death will not be in vain, his sister told a crowd of supporters during a rally calling for justice that was held at the historic Glynn County courthouse in Brunswick earlier this month. Many attendees had driven hours from Atlanta to be there.

“I like to believe that our lives are already planned out before we even take our first steps,” Jasmine Arbery said. “I hate to feel like he was sacrificed, but that’s how I feel.”

A caravan of predominantly black car and motorcycle club members retraced Ahmaud’s running route to Satilla Shores. People riding in freshly waxed and polished Corvettes and Dodges laid flowers at the shooting scene.

Gazing at the tributes later that night, Cooper-Jones said she does not doubt that she raised her son right. As a mom, she had been a stickler; she knows that.

This month, she celebrated her first Mother’s Day without her youngest child. Thinking about a greeting card he’d given her for the occasion two years ago made her smile.

“We don’t see eye to eye, but I love you,” she recalled Ahmaud writing. “That tells me, I had just got on his butt about something that he did.”

Ultimately, she said, nothing her son did in his short life justifies the way he died.

“I will get answers — that was my promise,” she said. “That’s the last thing that I told him, on the day of his funeral, that Mama will get to the bottom of it.”

___

(Sarah Blake Morgan, in Brunswick, Georgia, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed. Morrison is a member of The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.)