After solemn memorial, mourners gather around the country to remember George Floyd

Although the issues at the core of these protests are not new, experts said, the diversity of the crowd and the sustained momentum are. Several longtime protesters have wondered: Why now? Experts cite a confluence of factors, including a mainstreaming of protests, a backlash to citywide vandalism, the response to a fortified Washington, frustration with the government’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic and a growing recognition of unequal treatment of black people.

Rashawn Ray, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that if momentum continues, the demonstrations could mark a turning point in the larger movement against systemic racism that would mirror shifts from the civil rights movement in the late 1960s.

Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards called Friday for the firing of four officers involved in the death of Manuel Ellis, a 33-year-old black man, after the county medical examiner ruled that his death, while he was restrained in handcuffs on the ground, was a homicide.

New video footage of the violent March 3 arrest emerged late Thursday, showing Tacoma police officers beating Ellis on the side of the road, repeatedly striking him as he struggled. The footage, provided by the Tacoma Action Collective, shows officers telling him to “just put your hands behind your back” while they were already on top of him.

As protests around the country continue over the death of George Floyd, the Supreme Court is examining a form of immunity that has shielded police from lawsuits about excessive force and other government officials for alleged civil rights violations.

The court could announce as soon as Monday whether it will accept for argument next term challenges to a doctrine called qualified immunity. It protects officers from lawsuits unless plaintiffs can show that the accused violated “clearly established” laws or constitutional rights they should reasonably have been aware of.

Dallas police who see another officer use inappropriate physical force are now required to step in and stop their colleagues, the city’s police chief said early Friday.

The rule, known as a “duty to intervene” policy, applies to both sworn and non-sworn officers. Police Chief Reneé Hall said the order is meant to create a police culture that would have prevented a death like that of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“His fellow co-workers either assisted or stood by and watched Mr. Floyd take his last breath. Had the officer’s partners intervened, the outcome might have been different,” the Dallas Police Department said in a statement, according to the Dallas Morning News.

BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the killing of George Floyd in a television interview Thursday evening, but held back from directly criticizing President Trump for stoking tensions.

“The murder of George Floyd is very, very terrible,” she said in the interview with the German channel ZDF. “Racism is terrible. American society is very polarized.”

She sidestepped several questions on whether she believes Trump is inflaming those divisions, saying she did not want to draw a direct connection. But she described his “political style” as “controversial."

Park police in Maryland are searching for a man who allegedly assaulted a group of people while they were putting up fliers about George Floyd earlier this week along a portion of a popular trail that runs between Washington and Bethesda.

The tense confrontation that played out Monday on the Capital Crescent Trail was captured in a now-viral video, which began circulating widely Thursday, sparking furious calls for the man to be identified and the incident investigated. Members of the group in the video told WJLA on Thursday that they had been posting fliers bearing the all-caps message, “KILLER COPS WILL NOT GO FREE.”

As police engage with protesters in cities across the United States, many major police forces are still much whiter than the communities where they work. Decades of reform have made police less white, but it has not been enough to keep pace with the changing demographics of the country.

This widening racial gap has left very few police forces that resemble the people they serve, which experts say can hinder community relations and affect crime rates.

Read more here.

A California mayor resigned Thursday after sending an email earlier in the week claiming that local police in his city had never killed a “good person of color.”

Temecula Mayor James “Stew” Stewart sent the email Tuesday night, responding to a constituent asking what he and his administration were doing to address systemic racism in policing. After the email became public, Stewart said the word “good” had been added by mistake by the talk-to-text software he used to compose the message because of his dyslexia. He said he did not proofread the email after working a 12-hour shift at his barbershop in Temecula, which is about 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles.