MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st May, 2020) US President Donald Trump has stressed that people have the right to be safe at home and in city streets and warned against surrendering to hostility, admitting nonetheless that the death of George Floyd was a grave tragedy.
"My administration will always stand against violence, mayhem and disorder. We will stand with the family of George Floyd, with the peaceful protesters and with every law abiding citizen who wants decency, civility, safety and security," Trump said on Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Trump warned that radical left-wing groups could be exploiting the tragedy to loot and rob, thus dishonoring the memory of George Floyd. The US president warned against "surrendering to hostility" and stressed that every US citizen has the right to be safe in their workplace, home and city streets.
"The death of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis was a grave tragedy. It should never have happened. It has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger, and grief," Trump said, adding that "what we are now seeing on the streets of our cities has nothing to do with justice or peace."
Protests have erupted across the United States this week after George Floyd, an African-American man, died in police custody on Monday, after a white police officer in Minneapolis knelt on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes. A video circulating online shows Derek Chauvin pinning unarmed Floyd to the ground with his knee, Floyd repeatedly tells the police officer that he cannot breathe until becoming unresponsive. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.
A US Federal Protective Service officer was shot and killed Friday night in Oakland, California, near the site of the local George Floyd protest.
The US Department of Homeland Security said that such acts qualified as terrorism.
"When someone targets a police officer or a police station with an intention to do harm and intimidate, that is an act of domestic terrorism," DHS Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli said as quoted on ABC news on Saturday.
US President Donald Trump warned on Saturday that if the unrest continues in US cities, then the federal government would step in and the military would be used.
