Charlotte City Council member Braxton Winston arrested during George Floyd protests
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - Charlotte City Council member Braxton Winston was arrested during a protest over the death of George Floyd Friday night, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney.
Winston was arrested and charged with failure to disperse on command, a misdemeanor.
He was in the middle of the protest, seen speaking with both police and protesters. WBTV reporter Ron Lee described what he saw when the council member was detained.
“Police actually broke line and scooped him up and dragged behind the lines and arrested him,” Lee said.
Many Charlotte residents became familiar with Winston during the unrest that followed the Keith Lamont Scott shooting in September 2016. At the time, crowds of people flocked to the streets to protest police injustice. Winston was among those crowds and later turned his attention to politics.
Police say that more than 250 protesters gathered outside of Beatties Ford CMPD precinct. Charlotte police were standing guard at the front of the building .CMPD said their Civil Emergency Unit was deployed and declared the gathering an unlawful assembly.
CMPD tweeted that several protesters started to throw rocks and objects at officers as they continued to facilitate protesters’ right to demonstrate. Police also tweeted that several protesters had damaged police cruisers and continued to throw rocks at officers and the Metro Division office.
George Floyd died in police custody in Minnesota.
The white Minneapolis police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck was arrested and charged with murder Friday, and authorities imposed an overnight curfew in Minneapolis to try to stem three nights of protests that left dozens of stores burned and looted.
Derek Chauvin, 44, was charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the case. He was also accused of ignoring another officer at the scene who expressed concerns about the black man as he lay handcuffed on the ground, pleading that he could not breathe. Floyd had been arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit bill at a small grocery store.
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