Most of the protests in New York City's boroughs were peaceful throughout the day Sunday, but as night fell, "It turned dark and it turned ugly and it turned that way fast" and involved outside organization, New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Monday morning,
"You saw the large groups of people who had no inclination for peaceful protest once it got dark," Shea said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "We had a significant number of stores broken into. We are still out there actually, as we speak, making arrests. There have been hundreds of arrests."
Shea added that there was "evidence" of outside groups getting involved as the situation escalated, and that there have "absolutely been influencers."
"We have seen evidence of that, and I think you are seeing when you see organized people showing up to protest, we had individuals again last night showing up with Molotov cocktails," said Shea. "When you see incidents like this, turn in a very rapid fashion ... there is evidence of an organization, at times, behind some of this activity."
Shea added that the protests mark "one of the most challenging times" he's seen in his 30 years of police work.
He also pointed out that everyone has seen the video of Minneapolis resident George Floyd dying after white police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck as the black man begged for mercy. Shea said that if people weren't "disgusted" by it, he's not sure what to say, but still, Chauvin has been arrested.
Meanwhile, Shea told NBC's "Today" that the National Guard is not needed in New York City, and he does not believe a curfew will work.
"We could impose a curfew today," he said. "The problem is, people need to listen to a curfew, that's not going to happen, first and foremost. If people think it will, they don't understand what's going on. The second point is anyone that is on the street during the curfew, we had this discussion last night, they probably would already be arrested for five different offenses. What we're trying to do is trying to manage an extremely volatile situation."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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