Raleigh declares state of emergency a day after peaceful protest turns to ‘anarchy’
Gov. Roy Cooper said the National Guard stands ready to help Raleigh and Charlotte after a weekend of chaos in the streets during protests over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
Cooper said he believed the two cities had requested the help. On Sunday afternoon, Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin signed a declaration for a state of emergency that gives the city the option to request the guard.
As of 7 p.m. Sunday, crowds had gathered in downtown Raleigh for a second day of protests. Police were using tear gas.
A day earlier, a peaceful demonstration in front of the Wake County Courthouse devolved into chaos, leaving city officials, residents and business owners dealing with a mess downtown.
Around 7 p.m. Saturday night, police officers released tear gas and pepper spray into the crowds near South McDowell and West Davie streets. As the night wore on, and crowds thinned from a peak of more than 1,000, police repeatedly used tear gas and smoke bombs; and in front of the courthouse on Fayetteville Street, they shot rubber bullets at protesters and journalists.
Nearly every shop along Fayetteville Street had shattered windows. Buildings were defaced.
Cooper said Sunday that it’s unfortunate headlines were “more about riots and tear gas and broken windows and stolen property” than what people were protesting.
“That’s wrong and must be stopped. But I feel the cry of the people is being drowned out by the noise of the riots,” the Democratic governor said.
“People are more important than property. ... Black lives do matter,” he said.
State of emergency
Cooper said that the National Guard would be deployed upon requests by cities.
“Some of these guardsmen are trained in how to protect public structures. That is how they will be used,” Cooper said.
Cooper said mayors have different strategies to maintain order but that he wanted to make sure officers use their de-escalation training to make sure violence is stopped.
Raleigh’s state of emergency allows the city to impose a curfew and the city will have access to help from the State Highway Patrol and the National Guard, if needed.
“A lot of this will be determined what happens tonight,” Baldwin said.
There was no curfew in Raleigh on Sunday night. To institute a curfew, the city would have had to announce it by 5 p.m.
Fayetteville Mayor Mitch Colvin issued a curfew for Sunday evening that he said could start as early as 7 p.m.
“We’re hoping we don’t have to institute a curfew,” Baldwin told the N&O. “We’re encouraging people to stay at home. We still have the coronavirus to deal with. People staying at home is the best solution.”
Baldwin could not be reached and issued no statements Saturday night while the riot was taking place.
About 4:30 p.m. Sunday in Raleigh, as Cooper was wrapping up his comments, protesters who had marched from the Capitol area were lying down in front of the old courthouse.
As Wake County sheriff’s deputies in riot gear approached and Raleigh motorcycle police drove by, the protesters chanted, “I can’t breathe.”
Meanwhile, a man who has been seen at ReopenNC rallies scrubbed graffiti from the Confederate monument. He was wearing a kilt and had a handgun strapped to his waist.
“I think people are praying that it is peaceful and we don’t have the types of violent actions that we had last night,” Baldwin said. “That’s our prayer. We also have to be prepared. We’re preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.”
A vote on racial equity training for the city council is on its agenda for Tuesday. “The timing of this couldn’t be better frankly,” she said.
“The facilitators will be engaging the community as we have these discussions,” Baldwin said.
City officials defend response
City officials blamed protesters for the confrontations and defended the police response.
“There was a group of people who came in the dark of night, who had no intention of protesting peacefully,” Baldwin said during a Sunday morning news conference downtown. “Instead their goal was destruction, theft and violence, as you can see in our streets today.”
The organizers of Saturday’s afternoon rally said in a statement they had planned a nonviolent event but criticized the Raleigh Police Department for its use of force.
“We are committed to supporting peaceful means of ending all forms of racism and violence,” the statement said.
Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown said police acted only after being pelted with rocks and water bottles.
“We had two hours of peaceful protest and the rest was anarchy,” Deck-Brown said at the news conference.
Five officers were taken to hospitals with injuries, Deck-Brown said. All have been released.
There were 12 arrests overnight and, because investigations remain active, more will follow, Deck-Brown said.
Raleigh police were investigating a shooting at the corner of Blount and Martin streets that left a man wounded at 2:08 a.m. Sunday. The man was transported to WakeMed for treatment.
Police records show six people — five males and one female — were arrested at 4 a.m. for breaking and entering at DGX. All but one of those charged are Wake County residents.
Raleigh police arrested two men at 5 a.m. for resisting a police officer at 200 Fayetteville St.
At 12:15 a.m., Wake County sheriff’s deputies arrested a 21-year-old male resident of New York City at 316 S. Fayetteville Street, charging him with felony inciting a riot, being intoxicated and disruptive and possession of a controlled substance.
George Floyd protest
On Sunday, Deck-Brown told reporters she’s attuned to the “tarnished’ history of policing in the United States and around the world, and teaches Raleigh’s officers about it.
“It’s important to recognize that while I wear this uniform, I am a black woman in America. I get what it’s like to be black, in more ways than any of you will ever imagine or know.”
Officers learn in her training about slave patrols in the United States and about police in Nazi Germany, she said.
“It was the police that created one of the greatest travesties in the world, the Holocaust,” Deck-Brown said. “So you build that history over time to Mr. Floyd, and it’s very tarnished.”
Floyd, an African American man, died in Minneapolis on Monday. In a widely circulated video, a white police officer is seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck while Floyd says he cannot breathe. Floyd was declared dead shortly afterward.
The now-fired officer, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
In the days since Floyd’s death, protesters have turned out in large numbers in Minneapolis, where they burned a police substation; in Atlanta, where they broke into the CNN building; and in New York, where they rallied in front of the Barclays Center, a symbol of gentrification in Brooklyn.
Crowds also protested in Houston, Los Angeles and in Charlotte, where dozens of people were arrested and protesters blocked traffic on Interstate 277, the Charlotte Observer reported.
The activists in Raleigh were also recognizing Breonna Taylor, a black woman who was killed March 13 in Louisville, Kentucky, after police forcibly entered her home to serve a search warrant; and Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was fatally shot in Georgia by two white men in Georgia while running.
Several protesters said they were afraid to be black men in America right now.
“It’s pretty scary,” Donny Durham, 21, of Greensboro, said. “It’s pretty freaky.”
Senate leader Phil Berger called Floyd’s death shocking and tragic.
In a statement Sunday, Berger said officials should have been prepared for unrest in Raleigh after riots rocked other cities.
“I hope the advance preparation yesterday was not for the police to be given stand-down orders as rioters set fire to buildings and looted stores,” said Berger, a Republican. “Leaders in Raleigh and Wake County should be forthright with the public and explain how this was allowed to happen and provide assurance that adequate steps are in place to prevent this chaos and destruction from happening again.”
Cleanup starts
On Sunday morning, downtown Raleigh lay strewn with garbage and broken glass, graffiti spray-painted across its walls.
Caffe Luna restaurant sat wide-open on Hargett Street. The Raleigh Times Bar had a head-sized hole through its one remaining window. The merchandise from the CVS in Fayettevlle Street lay on the sidewalk outside. At the DGX dollar store at Blount and Davie streets, the aisles were overturned and the windows smashed. Every bottle of shampoo had been not only knocked to the floor but emptied.
Banks had “pigs” scrawled on the front doors. Half-empty bottles of whiskey sat on the park benches. Empty tear gas canisters sat on piles of broken glass.
The coolers inside downtown businesses were ransacked, alcohol taken and partially drunk. Gallons of milk sat on the sidewalks with swigs taken out of them. Downtown residents said once the tear gas hit the streets, protesters stole water to pour in their eyes.
City officials announced Fayetteville Street was temporarily closed between Salisbury and Wilmington streets for cleanup.
Due to damage as a result of the violence, four Wake County public buildings — the courthouse, the justice center, the county office and the public safety center — will be closed on Monday.
Downtown residents quietly took up garbage bags and joined the cleanup.
“It’s hard to make sense of,” said Carolyn Glover, who lives at Sir Walter Apartments. “It was peaceful at 4 o’clock. The families. The blacks and the whites. Then the thugs moved in. I watched them jump on that newspaper box. I watched them break in that bank. It was white and black. We stood right here until the tear gas was getting in. The tear gas was getting in the windows.”
Raleigh City Council member David Knight saw the clean-up work in downtown Raleigh on Sunday afternoon.
“Everybody’s coming together and what happened last night is not the Raleigh we know, and we’re not going to let it happen again,” he said.
Should there be a curfew?
Knight said imposing a curfew would be a “tough call,” but he leans toward supporting it as a way to “de-escalate the situation.”
Raleigh City Council member Corey Branch wants to see what happens before he decides whether he’d support a curfew.
“We can’t let what happened last night happen again,” he said. “I want our local community to help keep the peace and work with us in coming up with solutions.”
Raleigh City Council member Jonathan Melton said he would support Baldwin if she decided to impose a curfew, but he hopes the city can move forward.
Melton was at the demonstration early but not for the confrontations between protesters and law enforcement. “I saw a really diverse crowd,” he said. “It was peaceful and well-organized.”
The city council is preparing to appoint members to a new police advisory board.
The board will review policies, but won’t conduct investigations or hear citizen complaints, The News & Observer reported.
“Police policies should be reviewed by the community,” Melton said.
NC officials respond
Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest issued a statement Sunday: “Committing injustice to protest injustice serves no purpose, can bring no peace, start no meaningful dialogue, and drives a wedge between a society that so desperately needs to unite.
“Swift justice is needed in the George Floyd case. Immediate enforcement is needed to stop the destruction we are seeing here at home. Both are wrong.”
At 12:45 a.m. N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore said he asked Cooper to immediately send in the National Guard. He followed with livestreamed videos on his Facebook page showing the destruction from above, with police cars, smoke and clusters of activity scattered through downtown.
“It’s one thing to see this on TV,” Moore said. “It’s another thing to see the fire, have the tear gas get in your face, hear the screams.
“It was just absolute mayhem,” he said. “There’s just no words for this.”
Wake County board of commissioners Chairman Greg Ford said in a statement that violence is never acceptable.
“While the Wake County Board of Commissioners will always advocate for peaceful demonstration to ensure that all voices are heard,” Ford said, “we support our colleagues at the City of Raleigh in saying that violence and destruction is never acceptable. It only diminishes the power of a positive message in a quest for change.”
Glover, 71, stood outside her apartment building on Fayetteville Street for several hours watching the protest Saturday. “It was so wonderful. It was so diverse. People had kids on their shoulders,” she said.
“I support peaceful protests,” Glover said about 9 p.m. over the sound of shattering glass and exploding fireworks. “Now they’re just being destructive.”
Carli Brosseau, Jessica Banov and Ashad Hajela contributed to this report.
This story was originally published May 31, 2020 at 8:17 AM.
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