Tonights pbs newshour. Major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by Consumer Cellular. Johnson johnson. Iafinancl Services Firm raymond james. Supporting social entrepreneurs aon their solutis to the worlds most pressing problems. The lemelson foundation, committed to improving lives in the u. S. And developing countries. Supported by the john dee and Catherine T Macarthur foundation , committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. And with the ongoing support of these institutions. This program was me possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Amna the Coronavirus Crisis rages on and so does thwar of words over a top pandemic scientist. E verbal volleys kept coming million infection and topped3. 5 137,000 deaths. Our White House Correspondent begins our coverage. Today, a fresh assessment of the covid19 pandemic. What we need to do is say, we are not going in the right direc
Discussion or save them for the q a at the end of the event, so i just want everyone to know that before we get started. So as i said, this, of course, could not be a more important or more timely conversation that we are going to have today since the death of george floyd in Police Custody last night. We have seen nationwide unrests, we have seen protests not only here in america but internationally. Weve also seen a certain narrative take hold. It start with the assumption that the only way to properly view George Floyds death is through racial lens. In fact, all of encounters between police and black suspects are increasingly view this way. Its a narrative of Derek Chauvin and that george floyd is every black man in america. That blacks essentially leave the house each day worried about having a violent encounter with police. The media has run with this narrative which faces very little pushback, very little skepticism and it leaves with us with the impression that the biggest probl
Situational awareness issue, is that, yes, the officers are dealing with mr. Floyd, but theres also other factors for them to consider. And in this case, the crowd started to grow in size, started to become more vocal. So now officers are always trained to deal with right, so what threat is the biggest threat . Is it the suspect on the ground in front of me in handcuffs that we have relative control or is it the unknown threat posed by the crowd that could go from verbal to trying to interfere with my arrest process in a matter of seconds. Did you factor that into your analysis of this case . I did. How did it how so . I could see officer chauvins focus started to move from mr. Floyd to the crowd. To at one point i think officer chauvin felt threatened enough that he withdrew his pepper spray canister and gave verbal commands to the crowd to step back. So, just to kind of wrap up, could you summarize the final opinions that you have made in this case . I felt that officer chauvins inte
Front yard in front of the Police Headquarters there. I dont smell any irritant in the air at the moment, but again, this has been going on all night. Periodically the police come out and announce the fact that theres a curfew, people need to disperse and go home. Theyre not doing that. Theyre staying out here. Theyre angry. Theyre upset. They dont like the explanation theyre getting from the police about what happened that the officer mistook or somehow thought she was firing a taser and instead fired a weapon. That the boy, the young man, had been stopped for a vehicle infraction because his license plates were expired. It just is something that people find just completely unacceptable. So, here we are. They want the officer fired. The mayor has also called for that. The police chief said theyre going to have due process. But the bottom line is at this point this has gone back and forth. Theres been some ebb and some flow. The crowd has gotten larger and smaller as the night has gone
Crises. A Health Crisis that sparked an economic crisis that inflamed a culture war that gave way to social unrest. Front pages across the country show the pain and outrage that is touching nearly every american this morning. You would have to go all the way back to 1968 for the last time so many cities were dealing with this level of civic unrest simultaneously. On sunday, the protests began peacefully. Tens of thousands of people out in the streets in all corners of this country. But as night fell, demonstrations in many places gave way to clashes and violent unrest. Crowds of protesters burned fires outside the white house. Demonstrators and police traded smoke bombs in memphis. And widespread looting across new york and california. All of this despite a massive show of force by Law Enforcement. Thousands of members of the National Guard have been activated in over two dozen states. In places like minnesota, d. C. And washington state, every Single Member of the National Guard was c