Mostly peaceful Seattle protests turn violent at night

A fourth day of large protests over the George Floyd killing on Monday in Seattle was largely peaceful but in the night the scene turned chaotic, with police using tear gas and flash band devices after authorities said demonstrators threw fireworks and tried to storm a barricade near a police station.

Demonstrators in Washington and around the country have been protesting the killing of Floyd, a black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck until he stopped breathing. On Monday afternoon large crowds of protesters again gathered in downtown Seattle for speeches and to march through the city’s core. Hundreds gathered outside City Hall and the crowd continued to grow as it made its way to the Capitol Hill neighborhood. At one point, video showed officers taking a knee with protesters in Capitol Hill in a show of solidarity.

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North of downtown, near the University Village shopping mall, police barricaded a grocery store’s windows after some people smashed them.

In the Capitol Hill neighborhood police declared the protests a riot about 9 p.m.

“Officers deployed less-lethal munitions and a mobile line of bike officers was established to disperse the crowd,” police said in a statement. There were no immediate reports of arrests.

Earlier Monday Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said while the damage from weekend protests that turned violent must be condemned and those responsible prosecuted, “we will not allow that to obscure the justice of the underlying protest.”

Inslee said that people are justifiably outraged following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and emphasized the constitutional right to protest. But he said that “violence and destruction has no place in this.”

“We just can’t allow violence to hijack peaceful protest,” Inslee said at a news conference.