Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Sunday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck. A car bomb had exploded at an Iraqi police recruiting center at Kisak, west of Baghdad.
The man killed by police has been identified by family and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as Daunte Wright, 20.
The state has mobilized the National Guard after crowds gathered in front of the Brooklyn Police Department on Sunday night and ordered an evening walk until Monday morning.
Rocks and other objects have been thrown at the Brooklyn Center’s police station building and there are reports of shots being fired in the vicinity of the police department, John Harrington, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, told a news conference. The unrest took place after police heard reports of a crowd of between 100 and 200 people marching to the police department.
Officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas, KARE, a subsidiary of NBC News, reported.
Police said in a statement that the front door of the Brooklyn Park Police Department, about 5 miles from the Brooklyn Center, was hit by a gunfire. The Brooklyn Park police officers were not involved in the shooting, but helped police in the Brooklyn Center with the ‘civil unrest’ that took place, the department said.
According to Harrington, 20 businesses were broken into at a nearby shopping center. The curfew was set in the suburb of Minneapolis, “so we can continue to keep our community safe,” Mayor Mike Elliott said in a statement on Twitter.
“Gwen and I are praying for Daunte Wright’s family as our state mourns the mourning of a black man taken by law enforcement,” Walz said on Twitter Sunday night. He also said he was watching the unrest in the Brooklyn center.
Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, told reporters at the scene that she received a call from her son on Sunday afternoon to tell her that police had pulled him down because he was hanging air fresheners on his rearview mirror, illegally in Minnesota. She said she told him to put the police officers on the phone so they could give the car insurance details.
She then heard police telling her son to get out of the vehicle, according to the video shot by KARE.
“I heard police officers say, ‘Daunte, do not run,'” she said in tears. The call ends, and she dials his number again, and his girlfriend answers and says he was shot.
“A minute later I called and his girlfriend, who was the passenger in the car, answered and said he had been shot,” she said.
Brooklyn Center police said in a statement that officers pulled over a man due to a traffic violation shortly before 2 p.m. and found he had an outstanding arrest warrant. When police tried to arrest him, he got back into the car. One of the officers, who was not identified, shot at the man. The car drove several blocks before hitting another vehicle. The man died on the scene.
After the shooting, a crowd of about 100 “highly incensed” people gathered, Harrington said.
The Minnesota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union called for a statement for an “immediate, transparent and independent investigation by an outside agency,” and for the speedy release of any camera footage.
It also said it was “deeply concerned that the police here apparently used dangling air fresheners as an excuse to stop a prank, something the police do all too often to target black people.”
Kurt Chirbas and Colin Sheeley contributed.