Street protests rocked New York City for a third straight day Saturday, even as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pleaded for calm after a demonstration the previous night left people bloodied and vehicles burned. A large crowd marched through Harlem, chanted outside a police precinct then blocked traffic on the highway along Manhattan’s East River. Farther south in Manhattan, thousands of demonstrators paraded around Union Square. Other groups marched through Brooklyn and Queens. Demonstrations during daylight hours were mostly peaceful, but as evening fell protesters hurled objects at officers, set numerous fires, torched and smashed police vehicles and blocked roads with garbage and wreckage. Dangerous confrontations flared repeatedly. Video showed two police cruisers lurching into a crowd of demonstrators on a Brooklyn street, knocking several to the ground, after people attacked it with thrown objects, including something on fire. It was unclear whether anyone was hurt. In numerous flare-ups, officers sprayed crowds with chemicals. Protesters smashed the windows on police vehicles, sprayed them with paint and set a patrol car on fire. Videos showed protesters dancing on top of a smashed police van, its lights still flashing. The protests, among many around the country over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota, came a day after several thousand people faced off with a force of officers on the streets around a Brooklyn sports arena. De Blasio, a Democrat, expressed solidarity with demonstrators upset about police brutality, but promised an independent review of the Friday night disaster in which a mob set fire to a police van and battered police cruisers with clubs and officers beat people with batons. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he had asked the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, to lead an inquiry and make a public report. The mayor said he was upset by videos of confrontations “where protesters were handled very violently” by police, including one that showed a woman being needlessly thrown to the ground. But de Blasio said some protesters had come “with an agenda of violence and incitement, and they meant to harm police officers, and they did harm police officers.” “They were subjected to horrible, vile things last night,” de Blasio said.. One demonstrator in Friday’s confrontations, Samantha Shader, 27, of Catskill, New York, was arrested on an attempted murder charge after police said she tossed a homemade firebomb at a vehicle occupied by several officers. The device did not ignite and the officers were unharmed, police said. Police also arrested her sister, Darian Shader, 21, on charges of resisting arrest and obstructing police. They were in custody Saturday and it wasn’t immediately clear whether lawyers had been appointed to represent them. City police said in a Twitter posting Saturday evening that federal charges were expected to be filed against “multiple” people for incidents involving homemade bombs. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said more than 200 people were arrested and multiple officers were injured Friday, including one who lost a tooth. BREAKING: The situation at Union Square has escalated. Vehicles have been set on fire.@PIX11News pic.twitter.com/uiPiCEYH50 — Cristian Benavides (@cbenavidesTV) May 31, 2020 Asked to comment on videos that showed officers shoving peaceful protesters to the ground and hitting people with batons, Shea said those acts would be investigated. But, he said, “It is very hard to […]

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