Police stun Americans - by firmly taking a knee with protesters
They are images that surprised and moved Americans: cops going for a knee alongside protesters in the most widespread civil unrest to rock the country in decades - and in doing this embracing an anti-racism gesture denounced by President Donald Trump.
As Trump pushes for a crackdown on often violent protests over the death of George Floyd, police officers from New York to LA to Houston are making gestures of solidarity with demonstrators incensed at the latest case of an unarmed black man dying while in police custody.
"I became popular the helmet and laid the batons down. Where do you want to walk? We'll walk forever," Chris Swanson, the white sheriff in Flint, Michigan, shouted to several protesters on Saturday.
Then Swanson did just that, setting off walking with them, to cheers. He even posed for a selfie with a black protester, and gave the thumbs up sign.
In Des Moines, Iowa, police chief Dana Wingert took a knee before a crowd of demonstrators and also other officers and explained it in this manner: "Us joining them in a symbolic way, that's the least we are able to do."
Anti-racism demonstrators across the country have embraced the gesture made famous by former quarterback Colin Kaepernick who commenced kneeling during pre-game renditions of the national anthem in 2016, to protest police brutality against blacks and other minorities.
Kaepernick was ostracized by the NFL over his kneeling protest, which earned him and likeminded athletes condemnation and insults from conservatives including Trump.
Now, the police are emulating the protesters emulating the quarterback turned civil rights activist.
In an powerful scene captured on camera Monday in NY, the city's white police chief Terence Monahan knelt and clenched hands with protest leaders, arms raised high, in an effort to show support and shared outrage at Floyd's death.
"Moments like this are how I know we will discover a way through," tweeted the city's mayor, Bill de Blasio, in response.
Similar scenes have played out in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Georgia - aswell as in the administrative centre Washington.
Leading politicians have adopted the gesture, from Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden to the mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti, who dropped to a knee plus a line of officers as they mingled with demonstrators near city hall on Tuesday.
The nationwide protests over Floyd's death on, may 25 have observed police charge against and fire tear gas or rubber bullets at protesters - a minority of whom have engaged in looting and vandalism in the most widespread racial unrest going to America in decades.
In some cases, the authorities outreach appears wholly genuine - a case of people pledging their solidarity with the anti-racism cause, and seeking an absolution of sorts for police abuses past.
At other times, the kneeling has served to defuse soaring tensions - raising the question of whether it is more of a de-escalation tactic.
Beyond your Trump International Hotel in Washington on Monday evening, for example, a type of police standing nose to nose with protesters took a knee as they were heckled by the screaming crowd.
In LA also, a line officers were being shouted at by protesters before finally taking a knee, one at a time, many of them smiling as they surely got to the ground.
"You want to have a knee? We'll have a knee with you because we are here with you," the first choice of the unit says. As he rises he shakes hands with a protester and urges the group to avoid violence to protect the town.
In Washington, a police spokesman told AFP the decision to kneel beyond your Trump hotel was "organic in as soon as and had not been a scripted technique."
He also said police were "not facing disciplinary action" for embracing what's seen by many as a gesture of defiance to authority - whether or not video footage from a day earlier seemed to show one officer yanking a kneeling subordinate back again to his feet.--AFP
