Police and protesters clash in NYC

Pastors and bishops led a pro-police march on Wednesday on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. But a confrontation between the group and anti-police protesters left at least four New York City Police Department officers injured, including Chief of Department Terence Monahan. Authorities arrested 37 people.

What were the protesters doing there? Anti-police demonstrators have camped outside New York’s City Hall in Manhattan in recent weeks, advocating for reduced funding for law enforcement following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Officers had joined the pro-police demonstrators from Brooklyn in what organizers billed as a “Power of Prayer–Stop the Violence March” when they met the other protesters on the bridge. The leader of the pro-police group said recent violent acts inspired their demonstration, including the shooting death of a 1-year-old boy on Sunday in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

Dig deeper: Read Emily Belz’s report about rising violence across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death.