Gov. Mike Parson says more than 1,000 National Guard soldiers will be called up to help crack down on the violent and destructive turmoil going on around Missouri. On Saturday, the governor signed an executive order activating the National Guard to help with ongoing turbulence.
Protests have sprung up in several Missouri cities since last week’s police brutality death of George Floyd, an African-American man from Minnesota. A white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for about eight minutes while the man was on the ground face down in handcuffs.
When night falls, the surroundings have become unruly in Kansas City and St. Louis. Four St. Louis police officers were injured during shootings Monday night and a retired officer there was killed by looters. News and police vehicles have been set on fire in both cities. Looters have broken into businesses and damaged property. Officers have been injured by flying objects. People in the crowd have been pepper spray and tear gas has been ignited.
During a press conference today, Parson says he’s not going to tolerate total chaos.
“We’re not going to have police officers, we’re not going to have citizens of Missouri being shot in our streets in this state and we’re going to put an end to it with whatever forces I have as governor of the state of Missouri. Whether that’s every member of the Highway Patrol, whether that’s every member of the National Guard, I will call them all out to stop the violence,” says Parson.
Brig. Gen. Levon Cumpton, the Adjutant General, says the state has more than 10,000 National Guard soldiers.
The governor, a former Polk County sheriff, says there must be law and order in America for people to survive.
“We all need to take a little more accountability,” he says. “I don’t care whether you’re an elected official, whether you’re an everyday citizen, whether you’re a mom, whether you’re a grandma or whoever you might be. You need to start standing up and protecting one another and not engage and not trying to create chaos and commit criminal activities. They’re really trying to change a cause that definitely needs to be changed. Things need to be done different in society. We need to address issues that the African-American community have, but not through violence – not through what we’re seeing out there on the streets.”
Parson thinks the behavior is organized crime that is different from the 2014 Ferguson riots.
“When all the sudden you’ve seen pallets of bricks show up or pallets of blocks that show up, you’re having a strategy where dumpsters are where you pull them out and you set them on fire, they know to try to burn police cars because it gets more of the media coverage, and their main focus is to try to get to the police stations or the law so they can disrupt the services there. So, they have a plan of how they do sweeps, they have a plan of how they attack police officers,” says Parson.
The FBI and its SWAT team, ATF and Missouri Highway Patrol are also helping on the ground in St. Louis.
Copyright © 2020 · Missourinet