History repeats itself in the United States. The American city of Philadelphia experienced a new evening of demonstrations, Tuesday, October 27, marked by arrests while looting took place the day after the death of a black man shot by police. City police warned on Twitter that “a large crowd” of around 1,000 was attacking businesses in northeast “Philly”.
Footage shot from a helicopter showed looters raiding a Foot Locker store, as well as another store, and several videos shot by local media have filmed the looting of a Walmart hypermarket, also in the north of the city. . The protests took place in another neighborhood in West Philadelphia, where Walter Wallace Junior lived, the 27-year-old black man shot dead in the street by two police officers on Monday afternoon.
More than 30 police officers injured
In the early evening Tuesday, they were a little more than a thousand to walk, before being stopped by the police, who had established a cordon, noted journalists from Agence France-Presse. The procession then dispersed, but several small groups of a hundred people each crisscrossed the neighborhood, some burning trash cans and several sofas, transported to the middle of the street. In several places, the police intervened without warning to disperse these small groups, sometimes with batons, and made several arrests.
The day before, more than 30 police officers had been injured, including a policewoman, run over “deliberately” by a van, according to the head of the police force of the city, Danielle Outlaw. She had her leg broken and was still hospitalized on Tuesday.
You cannot re-educate hate.
The two police officers involved in Walter Wallace Jr’s death have been suspended pending the results of an investigation by the police and the local prosecutor. They had arrived at the scene in response to a call mentioning a family dispute and about a man with a knife. According to a police spokesperson, Walter Wallace Jr refused to drop his weapon despite the officers’ orders.
The family of the young man claimed, through the voice of his lawyer, that the call was not for the police but for medical emergencies because Walter Wallace Jr, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was in the throes of a crisis. “These police officers were poorly trained,” said Ezra Alidow, a 25-year-old black artist. “You cannot re-educate hatred,” replied Nat Turner, a 61-year-old African-American photographer, noting that the national police union Fraternal Order of Police had recently supported Donald Trump. Philadelphia police “don’t seem to understand that our lives are worth as much as any other,” said Nat Turner.
Biden laments ‘injustice’ against black community
To maintain order in this metropolis which has become one of the main electoral battlefields between Republicans and Democrats, the town hall appealed to the National Guard on Tuesday. Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney has expressed concern over a sharp rise in tension in a city where protests for Black Lives Matter after George Floyd’s death in late May were accompanied by looting and violence, and ‘an increase in crime. He did, however, distinguish between “peaceful protesters, who were there last night and may be there for a week or two”, and “vandalism and looting which are not acceptable forms of free speech”.
If the violence continues in the coming days, the situation in Philadelphia could become a central subject of this end of the presidential campaign. Donald Trump and the Republicans have made the rise in crime in large metropolises, often run by Democrats, an argument against Joe Biden. The US president often cites Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia in particular, as a place where the risk of voter fraud is highest, even though no incidents have substantiated this thesis.
“We are monitoring the situation closely. We stand ready to deploy federal resources, if necessary, ”indicated Tuesday morning Alyssa Farah, director of communications for the White House.
Joe Biden also reacted quickly: while deploring a new “injustice” against the black community, at the heart of his electorate, he warned against any looting and any attack against the police. “Looting is not demonstrating, it is a crime,” he stressed. Donald Trump is “incapable” of “bringing people together, but we will get there,” he said.
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