Kenosha Shooting: NBA Cancels Thursday’s Games

City and state officials emphasized that the death on Wednesday was a suicide. “It did not involve a police shooting,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said at news conference on Wednesday night. “The situation has gotten to the point now where it’s absolutely unacceptable.”

Video footage of demonstrators showed people criticizing the police for escalating the situation, and for using tear gas or pepper spray on protesters. Some said that the unrest there was a reaction to police brutality more broadly, not to the suicide on Wednesday.

Mr. Walz said the State Patrol had been deployed in the city to help restore order, and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis said he had ordered an immediate curfew and had requested additional help from the National Guard.

“What our city needs right now is healing,” Mr. Frey said at a news conference with the city police chief, Medaria Arradondo, on Wednesday night. “We do not need more destruction. We do not need property damage that is unacceptable in every way, shape and form, and I want to be very clear: It will not be tolerated.”

On Thursday morning, the Minneapolis Fire Department said it had responded to four buildings on fire overnight, adding that the cause of the blazes was still under investigation. Two people were rescued from the fires, and none were reported injured.

On Wednesday, the police released video of the man shooting himself, saying it was important to quell rumors that he had been killed by the police. “People need to know the facts,” Chief Arradondo said. By Thursday morning, they had removed the video “due to the graphic nature and out of respect to the individual, his family and the community.”

In a tweet on Thursday morning, Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the City Council, reiterated that the man had killed himself, and that police had not shot him. “But people assuming they did is rooted in a steep distrust,” Mr. Ellison said. “That distrust is our failure to own.”

Reporting was contributed by Ruth Graham, Ken Belson, Alan Blinder, Michael Cooper, Jacey Fortin, Sarah Mervosh, Richard Perez-Peña, Marc Stein, Neil Vigdor and Alan Yuhas.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kenosha-shooting-protests.html