Protesters were detained by the police in Minneapolis on Sunday.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
A week after George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis, daytime demonstrations focused on racism and police brutality are increasingly giving way to violence and chaos by night, fueling tensions over the direction of a protest movement that has unfurled in sprawling fashion in dozens of cities across the United States.
Several people have been killed or wounded in shootings linked to the unrest, and looters have raided neighborhood shops and upscale commercial districts from Santa Monica, Calif., to Boston, as a sixth day of largely peaceful protests descended into lawlessness.
President Trump, who has been besieged by protests and fires outside the White House, took a hard line on Monday in a call with state governors. “You have to arrest people,” the president said, warning that governors would look like “jerks” if they did not crack down.
The unrest and the race to control it have come when the country was already grappling with a pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 people and an economic collapse that has put millions out of work. National Guard troops have been deployed to help overwhelmed police departments in about half the states, and dozens of mayors have imposed curfews in the hope of heading off violence.
But as residents and business owners across the country awoke on Monday to sweep and scrub the latest damage away, many expressed a determination not to let destruction define the narrative — a sentiment was shared by Mr. Floyd’s brother, Terrence Floyd, who expressed concern that the violence would overshadow calls for justice.
