NEW YORK — A New York City police officer was suspended without pay Sunday after he was recorded putting his arm around a man’s neck in what the police commissioner called an “apparent chokehold.”
The department’s action to suspend the officer was stunning in its swiftness, occurring just hours after the morning confrontation on a beach boardwalk in the Rockaway section of Queens.
A video shot by one of the men involved showed a group of officers tackling a Black man, with one of them putting his arm around his neck as he lay face-down on the boardwalk.
In the video, someone yells, “Stop choking him, bro!” The officer relaxes his grip after a fellow officer taps him and pulls on his shirt.
It was unclear whether the man who was tackled suffered more than superficial injuries. He stood under his own power after he got off the ground and refused to let medics examine him after the incident.
The NYPD has long banned chokeholds. Their use has been especially fraught since the 2014 death of Eric Garner after an officer put him in a chokehold while trying to arrest him.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed into law a sweeping package of police accountability measures including a ban on chokeholds following protests over George Floyd’s killing.
Visitors to the American Museum of Natural History in New York look at a statue of Theodore Roosevelt, flanked by a Native American man and African American man. The statue will be coming down after the museum’s proposal to remove it was approved by the city. Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
Museum to remove Teddy Roosevelt statue after years of objection
NEW YORK — The American Museum of Natural History will remove a prominent statue of Theodore Roosevelt from its entrance after years of objections that it symbolizes colonial expansion and racial discrimination, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday.
The bronze statue that has stood at the museum’s Central Park West entrance since 1940 depicts Roosevelt on horseback with a Native American man and an African man standing next to the horse.
“The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,” de Blasio said in a written statement. “The City supports the Museum’s request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.”
The museum’s president, Ellen Futter, told the New York Times that the museum’s “community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd.”
No arrests in shooting in Seattle protest zone that killed 1
Seattle police on Sunday pursued their investigation into a weekend shooting in a park in the city’s protest zone that killed a 19-year-old man and critically injured another person.
No arrests had been made.
An “active and ongoing” investigation was under way into the shooting, which occurred about 2:30 a.m. Saturday in an area near downtown known as CHOP, for “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” zone, said Detective Mark Jamieson. The suspect or suspects fled the scene, and police asked the public for any information that could identify them.
The zone evolved after weeks of protests in the city over police brutality and racism following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Officers responding to the shooting said they had trouble getting to the scene because they were “were met by a violent crowd that prevented officers safe access to the victims,” according to a police blog.
Video released later Saturday by police appears to show officers arriving at the protest zone saying they want to get to the victim and entering as people yell at them that the victim is already gone. Police mostly retreated from the zone after clashes with protesters, KIRO-TV reported.
Private vehicles took two males with gunshot wounds to Harborview Medical Center, where the 19-year-old man died. A 33-year-old man, whose name was not immediately released, remained in critical condition Sunday, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg told KOMO-TV.
Statue of Spanish missionary in downtown Los Angeles toppled by demonstrators
LOS ANGELES — A statue of a Spanish missionary in downtown Los Angeles has been toppled by demonstrators.
The Los Angeles Times reports the statue of Father Junipero Serra in Father Serra Park was brought down Saturday by Indigenous activists who shouted and drummed as it flew off its pedestal.
No police were present.
The 18th century Roman Catholic priest founded nine of California’s 21 Spanish missions. Native Americans were forced to stay at those missions after they were converted or face brutal punishment. A statue of Serra was also toppled in San Francisco on Friday while statues on the East Coast honoring Confederates have been pulled down.
Confederate statue to be moved to cemetery
PINE BLUFF, Ark. — A Confederate statue has been removed from outside the Jefferson County courthouse in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and will be moved to a Confederate cemetery in the city about 40 miles southeast of Little Rock.
The 20-foot statue of a Confederate infantryman that was first placed outside Pine Bluff High School in 1910 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and moved to the courthouse in 1974 was taken down Saturday.
The statue owned by the Confederacy group is being moved as demonstrators have defaced and toppled statues and busts of former U.S. presidents, a Spanish missionary and Confederate figures as protests against police brutality and racism continued across the country.
Archbishop criticizes toppling of park statue
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone criticized the pulling down of the Junipero Serra statue in Golden Gate Park.
“What is happening to our society? A renewed national movement to heal memories and correct the injustices of racism and police brutality in our country has been hijacked by some into a movement of violence, looting and vandalism,” he said in a statement Saturday night.
Serra was an 18th century Roman Catholic priest who founded nine of California’s 21 Spanish missions and is credited with bringing Roman Catholicism to the Western United States.
Serra forced Native Americans to stay at those missions after they were converted or face brutal punishment. His statues have been defaced in California for several years by people who said he destroyed tribes and their culture.
George Washington memorial defaced in Baltimore
BALTIMORE — A statue and memorial to George Washington in Baltimore has been vandalized with red paint.
The Baltimore Sun reports that the memorial in Druid Hill Park in northwest Baltimore also had the words “Destroy Racists” and the initials for the Black Lives Matter movement written on the base.
Police said Sunday morning that they had not received any complaints about the vandalism.
As statues and memorials to the Confederacy have been targeted across the South, protesters have also at times targeted Founding Fathers who were slaveholders, including Washington.
Baltimore removed several statues and memorials linked to the Confederacy back in 2017.
Three arrested — including employees of a sheriff’s office — for vandalism of BLM sign
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Three men, including employees of a sheriff’s office and district attorney’s office in California, have been arrested for investigation of the vandalism of a Black Lives Matter sign.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said late Saturday that a tarp painted with the letters “BLM” has been repeatedly damaged in Thousand Oaks. The owner of the sign posted an image of one of the incidents on social media, and the office says detectives recognized the suspect as a sheriff’s office employee.
The worker was issued a misdemeanor vandalism citation and placed on paid administrative leave. Another person investigated for vandalism to the sign worked for the county district attorney’s office.
Trump holds rally in Tulsa to smaller-than-expected crowd
TULSA, Okla. — President Donald Trump has returned to the rally stage Saturday night only to find the venue about two-thirds full, a surprising and undoubtedly disappointing turn of events for a politician who values crowd size.
Trump launched his first rally in 110 days amid the coronavirus pandemic. Empty seats could be seen throughout the upper deck as Trump seemingly blamed protesters, saying “we had some very bad people outside that were doing bad things.” The lower deck was full, except for an area behind the television cameras where the view of the stage was blocked.
The vast majority of those in attendance bucked the guidance of health care experts and did not wear a mask, following the lead of a president who has insisted on not wearing a mask in public.
Trump applauded those in attendance as warriors. His campaign has planned for Trump to also speak at an outdoor venue before going inside the arena, but that event was canceled.
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Memorial to Black Wall Street in Tulsa covered with tarp
TULSA, Okla. — A memorial to Black Wall Street in the Greenwood District of Tulsa has been covered with tarp by residents who say they don’t want it used as a photo opportunity by the Trump administration as the president holds a campaign rally nearby.
The tarp was placed following a news conference that included Tiffany Crutcher, the twin sister of Terence Crutcher, a black man killed by a Tulsa police officer in 2016.
“This is not a photo op, that’s not what this is,” said Nehemiah Frank, editor of the online Black Wall Street Times in Tulsa, in a video posted following the news conference which called for the campaign rally to be canceled and for peaceful protests.
“This is a place to come pay respects to people that died a horrible murder from racism,” Frank said as the video showed signs attached to the blue tarp, including one reading “This is sacred ground, not a photo op.”
The Greenwood District was the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in which black-owned businesses were burned and an estimated 300 people were killed.
N.C. governor orders two Confederate statues removed
RALEIGH, N.C. — Crews have removed two Confederate statues outside the North Carolina state capitol in Raleigh on order of the governor.
The statues were taken away on Saturday, the morning after protesters toppled two nearby statues.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who has long advocated removing the statues, said in a press release that removing the statues was a public-safety imperative.
“If the Legislature had repealed their 2015 law that puts up legal roadblocks to removal, we could have avoided the dangerous incidents of last night,” Cooper said.
One of the statues is dedicated to the women of the Confederacy. The other was placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy honoring Henry Wyatt, the first North Carolinian killed in battle in the Civil War.
Both statues stood for over a century.
A 2015 law bars removal of the memorials without permission of a state historical commission. But Cooper said the law creates an exception for public-safety emergencies, and he is acting under that provision.
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