Here’s what you need to know:
- Some protesters linger and looting appears to lessen with an earlier curfew.
- Gov. Cuomo said the mayor and the N.Y.P.D. “did not do their job last night.”
- Here’s what you need to know about the city’s curfew.
- In the Bronx, teenagers and the police tested each other as the curfew neared.
- Protesters stick to their mission and crowds continue to swell.
Some protesters linger and looting appears to lessen with an earlier curfew.
For a second straight night, a citywide curfew took effect in New York on Tuesday, this time at 8 p.m., as officials tried again to curb the violent clashes, looting and other destructive acts that have marred the mostly peaceful protests that have filled the streets for nearly a week.
As happened on Monday, when much of the worst damage was done before an 11 p.m. curfew took effect, groups of people still lingered outside when the cutoff came.
In the hours after Tuesday’s curfew took effect, hundreds of people continued to walk peacefully in large groups through Brooklyn and Manhattan, chanting protest slogans and urging change as they had for nearly a week in demonstrations touched off by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“As long as it takes, I’m going to do it,” Sam Fitzgerald, 35, of Brooklyn, said of protesting. “It’s a revolution, baby.”
For the first hour after the curfew had passed, the police did not appear to be dispersing nor arresting the remaining protesters, at least not in large numbers. But many of those who were still marching were trailed closely by clusters of officers. Others encountered squad cars or barricades that diverted them from crossing bridges between boroughs or flooding commercial corridors.
On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, cross streets were blocked to keep demonstrators from flowing uptown. Both the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges were blocked to keep large numbers of protesters from crossing the East River into Manhattan. At least one group appeared to have sidestepped a barricade to continue its march from Brooklyn but was not stopped before they could complete the trek.
As the night continued, some officers appeared to become more aggressive as they sought to disperseprotesters.
On the Upper West Side, officers charged into a group that was peacefully protesting at around 9:30 p.m., according to New York Times reporters at the scene. The officers tackled a person with press credentials and made several arrests, and the crowd scattered.
Two hours after the restriction took effect, it was unclear exactly how effective it would be in stopping the kind of looting and vandalism that erupted on Monday across Midtown Manhattan and in the Bronx.
There were scattered break-ins. In one, the windows at a Gap store in Greenwich Village were smashed, with shattered glass and mannequins strewn on the street. Police arrived on the scene in a few minutes. Looters also hit Zara and Verizon stores in Lower Manhattan.
Still, by the time 8 p.m. arrived, there did not appear to be rampant reports of stores being broken into as there had been on Monday, when, the police said, there were some 700 arrests.
The latest round of rallies unfolded only hours after a rash of looting erupted through much of Midtown Manhattan, wrecking small shops and huge stores alike. In addition to casting a shadow over the protests, the destruction led Mayor Bill de Blasio to acknowledge that the curfew meant to halt it had failed, and to move Tuesday’s version up by three hours.
Gov. Cuomo said the mayor and the N.Y.P.D. “did not do their job last night.”
The events of Monday night led Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday to criticize the New York Police Department sharply and to second-guess Mr. de Blasio’s handling of the lawless groups that had run amok.
“The N.Y.P.D. and the mayor did not do their job last night,” Mr. Cuomo said. “It was rampant looting across the city last night that they did not stop.”
Mr. Cuomo said the State Police and 13,000 members of the National Guard were on standby. But Mr. de Blasio has said he opposes bringing in the National Guard, as President Trump has encouraged.
“We do not need nor do we think it’s wise for the National Guard to be in New York City,” Mr. de Blasio said at his daily briefing on Tuesday, calling it unwise to bring “outside armed forces into a situation they are not trained for.”
The mayor extended the city’s 8 p.m. curfew through Sunday night and promised to take action against the “outsiders,” “gang members” and “common criminals” he said were responsible for looting and violence.
“I know we will overcome this. I want to be abundantly clear,” the mayor said before adding that “we will have a tough few days.”
The curfew was a historic measure: The last time New York City faced one was in 1945. At the time, the United States was fighting World War II and facing a coal shortage, and the federal government ordered a midnight curfew on all “places of entertainment” to curb energy use.
More than seven decades later, Mr. de Blasio's executive order delivered another emotional blow to a city whose vibrant nightlife and always-on reputation were already stymied by shutdown orders enacted to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
The mayor defended the police’s response to the looting, and called on civic, religious and neighborhood leaders to step forward and encourage peaceful protests while telling New Yorkers to prepare for a few more days of unrest.
Mr. Cuomo repeatedly said he would need to “displace” the mayor in order to send in the National Guard. But to do so now, he added, could make an already chaotic situation even worse.
Still, the governor made clear that the onus was on the mayor to get things under control.
In a statement released Tuesday evening, Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor, clarified that Mr. Cuomo “has always said he has respect and confidence in the N.Y.P.D.” while doubling down on his critique of Mr. de Blasio.
“It’s not the men and women of the N.Y.P.D. — he questions the management and deployment of the N.Y.P.D. and believes the mayor should put more N.Y.P.D. officers on the streets to do their job,” Mr. Azzopardi’s statement said. “There are 36,000 police officers — why isn’t at least half the force on the streets protecting public safety with looting going on across the city?”
Here’s what you need to know about the city’s curfew.
As soon as the city’s curfew was announced on Monday, residents, elected officials and activists immediately raised questions about its enforcement and who would be exempt.
Those issues resurfaced on Tuesday, when the Police Department said that traffic in Manhattan would be banned below 96th Street as part of the city’s curfew, with exemptions for local residents, essential workers, buses and truck deliveries. (The area includes neighborhoods that have been the sites of some of the large peaceful protests and some of those hit hardest by looting.)
City officials have issued guidance saying that “essential workers” are among those excepted from the shutdown order, which is in effect from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Those exempt from the curfew include:
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Health care workers
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Law-enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians
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Those working at businesses deemed essential during the coronavirus pandemic, including grocery stores, convenience stores and pharmacies
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People seeking medical treatment or obtaining medical supplies
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Homeless people living unsheltered on the street and homeless outreach workers
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Members of the news media
Officials also clarified on Tuesday that the following activities are permitted during the curfew:
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Restaurant and food delivery
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Taking dogs out to use the bathroom, but only in the immediate vicinity of your home
For-hire car services, including those dispatched by Uber and Lyft, will also be banned from 8 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., according to the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, which oversees for-hire drivers. Yellow cabs and green cabs will continue to operate to transport essential workers or those needing medical treatment.
Citi Bike, New York City’s bike-share program, said that the city was requiring it to shut down during the curfew. Revel, a moped-sharing company, said that it had been told to end its service at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, two hours before the curfew took effect.
In the Bronx, teenagers and the police tested each other as the curfew neared.
As the 8 p.m. curfew neared on Tuesday, dozens of police officers began to gather along 149th Street, near Third Avenue, a South Bronx commercial hub that largely escaped the looting that occurred further north a night earlier.
As the number of officers in the area swelled, so did the groups of teenagers. Some carried backpacks that appeared to be mostly empty. One had a wooden baseball bat; another a broken-off dowel. Everyone seemed to be waiting. The officers were clutching batons.
A woman got off a bus nearby, surveyed the tense scene and shouted “I can’t breathe!” twice. Nobody joined in the chant and she walked away.
It was quiet for a moment as curfew fell.
Soon afterward, the police began to shout “go home” at the teenagers and chased a few of them off, banging the metal roll gates of shuttered shops with their batons for effect.
Then they began to make arrests.
One man who tried to run from officers stumbled as he crossed the street.
“My neck,” he shouted from the asphalt as three officers grabbed him. They accused him of violating curfew and led him away.
“I can’t breathe,” a young man began shouting over and over. Again, no one took up the chant.
Protesters stick to their mission and crowds continue to swell.
On Pearl Street in Manhattan, under the Brooklyn Bridge, demonstrators who saw a verbal confrontation start between protesters and police officers rushed to intervene. “Not worth it!” one of the peacemakers said.
On Wall Street, a young man implored a police sergeant to use his stature to bring change to his department. The sergeant responded by nodding his head in agreement.
At Washington Square Park, the site of a standoff a day earlier, scores of demonstrators left signs and flowers in a fountain before heading up to Fifth Avenue.
Near Union Square, hundreds of marchers filled Park Avenue as they marched north. Some apologized to drivers for stopping traffic. As the crowd passed a Duane Reade store with a smashed entryway, construction workers inside pressed their faces to the glass; some, their eyes wide, filmed the protesters with their phones.
Navid Mamoon, 20, marched with his mother, Nazmeen Mamoon, a Bangladeshi immigrant in her 50s, who said she had “never seen anything like this before,” in the United States. Ms. Mamoon said she supported the protests, but she added that she worked at a Macy’s store and that she and her colleagues were “scared” after the looting of the Herald Square flagship on Monday.
Asked if she was also worried for her son, Ms. Mamoon offered a broader answer: “I am scared for all of us,” she said.
Back at Washington Square Park earlier in the day, Alene Cohen, 92, looked on from the periphery as hundreds of protesters gathered in front of her.
She said that she had been “radicalized” after graduating from Brooklyn College in 1948 and that was particularly struck by the racial diversity of the protests of the past several days. She said she had not even had a conversation with a black person until she was 18 and in college.
“Nothing like this has happened in my 92 years of life,” she said. “I’m very proud of what all these people are doing, the grandchildren who might be here.”
She did find one fault with the crowds.
“There should be more people out here my age protesting!” she said.
Doctors gathered in Times Square for a 7 p.m. twist: honored black protesters.
Hundreds of demonstrators, led by well over 100 doctors and other medical workers, rallied in Times Square late Tuesday to honor Black Lives Matter protesters and black victims of police violence.
The protest was built around a repurposing of a daily tradition that emerged amid New York’s battle against the coronavirus pandemic: the 7 p.m. cheer to honor medical professionals, grocery store employees, delivery drivers and other essential workers who have kept the city during the near-total shutdown of daily life prompted by the outbreak.
“We are members of a community that is being applauded every day at 7 — there are advertisements here in Times Square thanking us,” said Dr. Hillary Dueñas, a resident physician at Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side and an organizer of the demonstration. “We think it is more appropriate to use our voice to applaud people who are protesting right now.”
Dr. Dueñas said that the pandemic, and its disproportionate impact on black and Latino people, was at the front of many doctors’ minds during the wave of civil unrest that has convulsed the country for the past week.
“The coronavirus pandemic has made clear that there have always been inequities in the community,” she said. “There has been a hugely disproportionate burden of death and disease among marginalized communities and communities of color.”
As the 7 p.m. cheer broke out, doctors and hundreds of protesters who had come to support their efforts marched to the center of Times Square chanting “Black Lives Matter!” and “How do you spell racist? N.Y.P.D.!”
“Nurses know the cops are racist!” one woman in blue scrubs and a floral face mask yelled. “We see the patients they beat!”
Many of the doctors who took part in the protest said they were uneasy about speaking to reporters, citing reports from earlier in the pandemic about hospital workers who had been penalized for speaking out about conditions at local hospitals.
One doctor, a 30-year-old emergency room doctor from Brooklyn who immigrated to the United States as a teenager, said she was frustrated by what she said were racist double standards in the county. She asked not to be publicly identified, fearing retaliation by her employer.
“I feel disheartened as a black person who has been in the United States for 13 years because no matter what you do here, you will never be treated equally by the police or by society,” she said. “It is not about your achievements or who you are as a person, as soon as I take off this white coat I am treated as badly as every other black person.”
“As a doctor, we treat every single patient we see equally, no matter their race or gender or anything else,” she added. “But as black people in America we are never given that same treatment by the police or by society.”
Mayor de Blasio announced a weeklong curfew and called violence and looting “unacceptable.”
Mr. de Blasio seemed to be trying to accomplish two goals in his briefing: unifying New Yorkers against recent acts of violence and looting, and explaining why a citywide curfew was necessary.
By beginning the curfew at 8 p.m. instead of 11 p.m., the police would be in better position to address “any situation where someone is trying to do violence to person or property,” the mayor said in explaining his decision.
He said that New Yorkers — from the city’s Police Department to ordinary citizens — were better equipped to deal with the looting and violence than outsiders like the National Guard.
“The people of New York City are strong and resilient. The people of New York City are good and decent people. The people of New York City stand up no matter what’s thrown at them,” Mr. de Blasio said.
He talked about being born in the city in 1961 and how over the next few decades it had overcome the threat of financial collapse, white flight and the AIDS and crack epidemics of the 1980s and ’90s.
The mayor added that the city was still in the midst of an enormous health challenge in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak; he said that the city was moving forward to begin the first phase of reopening on June 8 in spite of the unrest. He cited statistics showing a decline in the number of coronavirus infections.
Just two weeks ago, he said, the city was focused almost exclusively on beating back the pandemic. But the combination of the coronavirus and the economic ruin it has brought, along with the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minnesota, has taken a toll on the city.
“This is a horrible perfect storm we’re living through,” the mayor said.
Times reporters are covering the protests across New York. Here is what they are seeing.
More than a dozen New York Times journalists are on the streets of the city on Tuesday night covering protests from Midtown Manhattan to Park Slope in Brooklyn to Fordham Road in the Bronx. They will be following demonstrators as they march and several are posting live updates on Twitter.
Here is a look at some of their reporting:
Liam Stack, in Times Square
Amy Julia Harris, in Brooklyn:
Sarah Maslin Nir, in Greenwich Village
Derek M. Norman, in Midtown Manhattan
Julia Carmel, in Washington Square Park
At the Stonewall Inn, protesters seize the moment to honor black trans men and women.
Black transgender men and women stood in a triangle slice of park in front of the Stonewall Inn as part of vast protest at the birthplace of the gay rights movement on Tuesday, using megaphones to call out the names of people who have been killed by police or have been victims of transphobic hate crimes.
Many of those with the megaphones asked white people in the crowd of thousands to fall back as a gesture of respect for the movement.
“We are standing here in a gentrified space with gentrifiers who do not live our lives,” one person said over a loud speaker.
State Senator Brad Hoylman, an openly gay official who is white, attempted to speak but was initially shouted down by spectators who accused him of taking over a moment meant for black people. But another person silenced the hecklers, telling them: “He is at least trying.”
One of the hecklers, Joey DeJesus, who is running for elected office in the Bronx, was furious.
“They grandstand on our graves,” they said, with tears in their eyes.
By around 6:30 p.m., the large group had splintered into separate protests; one group began heading toward Union Square, marching peacefully as a long line of police cars and officers in riot gear followed behind them.
With the city’s curfew only about an hour away, some signaled a readiness to stay out on the streets well into the night.
“The city is calling a curfew — it is a curfew on blackness!” Olympia Sudan, a black trans activist shouted to the crowd, which roared back approval.
Reporting was contributed by Julia Carmel, Annie Correal, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Alan Feuer, Sandra E. Garcia, Michael Gold, Joseph Goldstein, Melissa Guerrero, Amy Julia Harris, Corey Kilgannon, Colin Moynihan, Jeffery C. Mays, Andy Newman, Sarah Maslin Nir, Derek M. Norman, Azi Paybarah, Jan Ransom, Dana Rubinstein, Ashley Southall, Liam Stack, Matt Stevens and Alex Traub.
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