(ETH) – Rioting and lawlessness continue to spread across American cities as more than half a dozen U.S. cities unraveled on Saturday night resulting in mayhem and chaos including damage to federal buildings, local police precincts, and a fatal shooting in Austin, Texas according to a report from Fox 32.
The report stated that similar protests and violent demonstrations are happening across the country following the death of George Floyd, a Black man in Minnesota who died while in police custody. A video of the May 25, 2020, encounter with police officers showed a White officer putting his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than 8 minutes. Floyd died later that day.
Fox 32 went on to state that: Floyd’s death — as well as the police shooting death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and other Black men and women — sparked widespread protests and demonstrations in the U.S. and across the world, which still continue in some cities to this day.
These have seemed to be the spark that has ignited a powder keg of riots, looting, and violence across the country including Portland, Oregon where rioters broke through a reinforced fence that surrounded the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in the downtown area resulting in Federal agents being dispatched to guard the building and deployed tear gas where the Portland police declared the scene a riot around 1:15 a.m. local time, the report said.
Meanwhile, the violence was so bad in Settle that rioters threw an explosive device that created an eight-inch hole in a wall of the police department’s East District, police Chief Carmen Best said, according to the Seattle Times. “What we saw today was not peaceful,” Best said. “The rioters had no regard for the public’s safety, for officers’ safety or for the businesses and property that they destroyed.” Where all this is leading is speculative but some fear that we could see troubling times in the months ahead.
