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The Pentagon's watchdog found that the DC National Guard's use of low-flying helicopters in response to protests in DC on June 1, 2020, over the death of George Floyd was "reasonable," but the mission was mired in confusion.

The report from the Department of Defense's Inspector General, released Thursday, concluded the deployment of helicopters was justifiable based on the needs of the emergency, as well as the direction from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper to "flood the zone" and "use everything available" to protect "federal property and symbols."

A lack of clear guidance on the helicopters' mission compounded the confusion, because Ryan "did not provide clear and consistent direction and mission guidance" and "did not provide his clear and consistent commander's intent to include key tasks and parameters for the operation."Enter your email to sign up for CNN's "What Matters" Newsletter. "close dialog"Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Sign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Please enter aboveSign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters Newsletter<di

Some of the most damaging testimony against the police officer on trial over the death of George Floyd is coming from fellow cops.

The second week of evidence against Derek Chauvin, who is charged with murdering Floyd, has moved on from wrenching eyewitness accounts of the Minnesota man's death, which sparked a worldwide racial reckoning. Prosecutors are now narrowing in on Chauvin's conduct in subduing Floyd, making a case that he acted outside reasonable police procedure.

The defense will argue that a combination of Floyd's health conditions that Chauvin could not have known about means there is reasonable doubt about whether he ultimately caused Floyd's death. But a succession of police officers have said Chauvin's actions were unnecessary, as prosecutors try to convince the jury that he acted with malice.

WASHINGTON - Already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression, cities across the United States smoldered on Tuesday after a seventh consecutive night of protests and civil unrest related to the death of African American George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police last week.&nbsp;&nbsp; As business owners and residents yet again clean up the debris, there is growing concern that the economic damage to many of the communities where violence is taking place will persist long after the last window pane is replaced and the last burned out car is towed away. Businesses and neighborhoods where protests have turned violent will have to contend not just with the aftermath of the protests, but with multiple aggravating factors that will make recovery even more difficult.&nbsp;

Many businesses had already been pushed to the edge of solvency by months of lockdown related to the coronavirus, and the slow and careful re-openings envisioned by many state and local leaders were not designed to allow commerce to rebound to pre-pandemic levels immediately.&nbsp; Layered on top of that is the Depression-level unemployment currently afflicting the nation and the prospect of an economy that will, at the very least, be in recession for the foreseeable future. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office delivered an analysis to Congress warning that the virus will adversely impact the economy through much of the next decade, cutting some $8 trillion from Gross Domestic Product over that period. Another distinct possibility is a second wave of the coronavirus, either arising naturally or helped along by massive protests in which people have been gathering in close proximity. The understandable rage at the death of Floyd, who was handcuffed by police and died&nbsp; after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, sparked protests in well over 100 cities across the country. His death has become the most potent recent symbol of a system in which black Americans are, with disturbing regularity, abused and even killed by law enforcement officers, frequently on camera. And while the vast majority of the protesters have been non-violent, in many cases there have been incidents of property destruction and looting, as well as attacks on police officers.

A federal contract security officer was killed and another injured in a shooting outside the US courthouse in Oakland, the FBI said on Saturday.

The shooting happened less than a half-mile from the Oakland police headquarters where demonstrators gathered to protest against the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.

Jesse and Jessica Hurtado, a husband and wife dressed in Brown Beret fatigues, joined the protest in solidarity with black protesters. They had just been to another protest in San Jose. “They’re not just killing African Americans. They’re killing black and brown together,” said Jesse.

The demonstrations are in the service of a constellation of hyperlocal and national goals, from small, material targets like tearing down statues of racist men that literally loom large over communities, to a whole-scale reimagining of how law enforcement is conducted in this country, including divesting from police departments and eliminating special legal protections for officers

“The demands all come together to stop the war on black people,” said YahNé Ndgo, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Philadelphia. “The ultimate demand is the end to violence, to end the war against black life.”

The nationwide demonstrations could carry on for days or weeks—maybe even through November, organizers told me. And yesterday’s protest in Washington may have just been a dress rehearsal for a massive March on Washington in August.

oing evil in the service of a just cause does not change either side of the moral equation: Evil remains evil, and the just cause remains just — neither consideration cancels out the other or transmutes it.

police work involves violence, and there is no getting around that

Americans have for a long time understood this and made allowances for it, which is why a questionable police shooting is investigated in a way that is different from that of a questionable private act of self-defense.

A serious divide has emerged among Donald Trump's top allies and advisers over how the President should address several nights of protests and riots across the nation following the death of George Floyd.

Trump's top domestic policy aide Brooke Rollins argued for a measured response to riots the night before, advice that was echoed by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Several advisers feared, and hoped to avoid, another Charlottesville moment, when Trump was criticized after declaring in 2017 that "very fine people" were among the Nazi mobs that descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia. When the President made his first vague statement on that violence, he blamed the conflicts on "many sides."

The next day, Trump had revived some of the violent imagery by evoking dogs and weaponry at the ready inside the White House gates, despite the earlier encouragement from his advisers to tone down his language.

The former Minneapolis police officer seen in a video with his knee on George Floyd's neck had 18 prior complaints filed against him with the Minneapolis Police Department's Internal Affairs, according to the police department.

Chauvin was fired this week, along with three other MPD officers who were present when Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck. Police have said they were responding to an alleged forgery at a corner store.

Floyd's death and video of the incident have sparked widespread anger, destructive protests and calls for the officers involved to face criminal charges.

(CNN)Early Friday morning, CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested while covering the protests that have sprung up in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz held a press briefing on the ongoing unrest in his state later Friday. Amid an update on how he would deal with the protests as well as the investigation into Floyd's death, Walz took a moment to address the arrest of Jimenez and his crew.

Now, Walz didn't tell those cops to arrest Jimenez and his crew. And had he known it was happening, he would have undoubtedly stopped it. But rather than look for a scapegoat, Walz owned the mistake. Because he is the governor of the state and the ultimate buck-stopper. If law enforcement in Minnesota makes a mistake, Walz understands that it, ultimately falls on him.

Before Breonna Taylor's name became synonymous with police violence against Black Americans, she was an emergency medical technician in Louisville, Ky.The 26-year-old Black woman's friends and family say she was beloved, and relished the opportunity to brighten someone else's day.

Exactly one year ago, Louisville police gunned her down in her home. Now, her name is a ubiquitous rallying cry at protests calling for police reforms, and many social justice advocates point to her story as an example of how difficult it can be to hold police accountable for violent acts. The Louisville incident unfolded during a botched narcotics raid, when officers forced their way into her apartment in the early morning hours of March 13, 2020. Taylor was not the target of the raid and the suspect police were searching for was not at Taylor's home.

A year after Taylor's death, none of the officers who fired their service weapons — a total of 32 rounds — face criminal charges directly over Taylor's killing. At least three officers with connections to the raid have been terminated from the force.

The jury chosen for the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with murder in the death of George Floyd, is notable because it is significantly less white than Minneapolis itself.

Among the 12 jurors and three alternates selected for the panel are three Black men, one Black woman and two jurors who identify as multiracial. If none of the three alternates — all of them white — is needed in the deliberation room, 50% of the panel that will vote on Chauvin's fate will be Black or multiracial.

Hennepin County, where the trial is being held, is only 17% Black or multiracial, while it is 74% white.The jury's racial makeup will assuage some of the concerns that activists and others had expressed as jury selection got underway two weeks ago. An insufficiently diverse jury, they believed, would undercut people's faith in the legitimacy of a trial seen as a critical moment in the racial justice movement that Floyd's killing helped reenergize last spring.

a mass shooting in Indianapolis that left eight dead. It comes after a week of anger, protest and hurt around two police-involved shootings of a Black man and a Latino boy in Minneapolis and Chicago, and all during the trial of ex-Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd.&nbsp;

"We don't have time to recover," explained Valerie Castile, mother of Philando Castile, a Black man killed by police in a 2016 traffic stop.

Biden also noted that on Friday, it has been 14 years since a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech.&nbsp;

The prosecution is presenting its closing arguments in Mr. Chauvin’s murder trial, arguing: “This was not policing” and “it was unnecessary.”

“George Floyd is not a threat, he never was. He was not resisting — he was just unable to comply,” the prosecution says. The ability to comply is something that comes up time and again in fatal police encounters — was the person autistic? deaf? Under the influence? The Minneapolis Police Department policy specifically requires officers to consider a suspect's ability to comply when they’re assessing whether the person is resisting.

Throughout this closing argument, as the prosecution attacks his actions and his character, Derek Chauvin has been doing the same thing that he has done throughout the trial: taking copious notes on a legal pad.

A century after a white mob destroyed a vibrant African-American community in Tulsa, Okla., torching hundreds of homes and indiscriminately shooting people in the streets, President Biden told a crowd of survivors and their families that the story of the massacre “would be known in full view.”

It was the first time a president had visited the area to address what happened 100 years ago in Greenwood, the African-American community in Tulsa, that was the site of one of the worst outbreaks of racist violence in American history but one that went largely ignored in history books.

Mr. Biden, who has made racial equity and justice central themes of his presidency, was there to shed light on a painful part of the country’s history, by recalling in detail the horror that occurred between May 31 and June 1 in 1921, when angry whites descended on Greenwood, a prosperous part of Tulsa known as Black Wall Street, killing as many as 300 people and destroying more than 1,250 homes.

The jury found Chauvin guilty on three charges in Floyd's death during an arrest last Memorial Day: second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

"It's a blessing," he told Houston Public Media. "Justice was served today. Because this is a long time coming. They've been doing this for years and years and years. From generation to generation. We've been screwed over, we've been mistreated. I mean, they just been getting away with crime."

A statue of colonial slave trader Edward Colston has gone on public display in Bristol, England, almost a year after it was toppled during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the city.

On June 7 last year, demonstrators denouncing historic and systemic racism and oppression defaced the controversial monument with red and blue graffiti. They used ropes to tear down it down from its plinth before rolling it through the streets and dumping it into the River Avon.

The statue -- which for many was a symbol of Britain's colonial legacy -- is now displayed at the M Shed museum, alongside placards from the protest and a timeline of events. The figure is lying down on its back, on a specially crafted wooden structure.

Last week, an anxious America awaited the jury’s decision. Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on all charges for the murder of George Floyd. But whatever feelings greeted such a rare outcome were short-lived for many. The next day, a Virginia man named Isaiah Brown was on the phone with 911 police dispatch when a sheriff’s deputy shot him 10 times, allegedly mistaking the phone for a gun.

Today, I’ve gathered three guests who approach reform differently to see where we agree and don’t. Rashawn Ray is a fellow at the Brookings Institute and a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. Randy Shrewsberry is a former police officer. He’s now the executive director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Training Reform. And Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is the first Black woman to serve as co-executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, a social justice training center where seminal figures like Rosa Parks trained.

Right, I think that we see so much of what policing has looked like, which is about the criminalization of poverty. I think it’s important to note here that this is something that I want to emphasize that police and justice impacts everyone with the cases of someone like Daniel Shaver, who was shot to death while crying on the floor, or Tony Timpa, who is held down by police while they laughed on body cam, and how much of this is the policing of poverty and the policing of what we think police are supposed to be doing is not what they’re doing. And so, Rashawn, I want to hear from you. You’ve done so much work on this. What are your top priorities when it comes to reforming policing?

Viral social media posts have falsely claimed that President Donald Trump invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 law to deploy American soldiers to police US streets. That didn't happen.

While the law provides ample legal footing for presidents to deploy the military if they so choose, in practice it's been used sparingly. The most notable application of the law was perhaps its invocation to enforce desegregation in the 1950s.

The Insurrection Act hasn't been invoked since 1992 during the riots in Los Angeles that followed the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, a black man, according to the Congressional Research Service.

New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department, citing "a pattern of using excessive force and making false arrests against New Yorkers during peaceful protests" that sought racial justice and other changes.

The Black Lives Matter movement and other activists organized large protests in New York and other states last year, after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Demonstrations grew over similar incidents, including the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.

"more than 1,300 complaints and pieces of evidence" about the police response to the protests in New York City. It's now seeking a court order "declaring that the policies and practices that the NYPD used during these protests were unlawful."

Ester, now 72, remembers the last days of Dr. King's life.

On the night of April 3, Ester remembered packing into a crowded congregation at Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis, where King delivered a sermon in support of the striking sanitation workers.

"Finally Dr. King arrives, and he said, 'When I entered into the city of Memphis, I was told about all of these threats. But none of that matters anymore 'cause I've been to the mountaintop,' " Ester said, paraphrasing his famous speech. "He proceeds in saying, 'If I don't get there with you, I want you to know that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.' "