Dozens of protesters hit the streets of Louisville on Thursday evening, paying little attention to the city’s 9pm curfew and squaring off with police.
Shortly before the curfew set in, police declared an “unlawful assembly,” saying that protesters were smashing windows on 4th Street.
Police did not report which buildings caught the activists’ wrath, but photos on social media show that windows had been shattered at the Main Library, located on 4th Street.
Someone apparently attempted to set fire to the building, hurling a road flare inside the hall.
Other footage showed rioters vandalizing a local business, apparently a seafood eatery, with sticks.
As the police moved in to make arrests, activists flocked to the 1st Unitarian Church, which is exempted from the citywide curfew, and then huddled inside its churchyard, serving as an improvised sanctuary.
At one point, it came to a verbal back-and-forth between a black protester and a group of white people. The protester was caught on the video shouting: “Get the f*ck out here, get the f*ck out all you white motherf*ckers!I will beat your ass, get the f*ck out here.”
It’s unclear what preceded the confrontation, and if the man and those he implored to leave were from the same group.
Earlier on Thursday, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer extended the curfew through the weekend, after two police officers were shot as they were responding to the protests on Wednesday.
The commander of the Louisville police department’s special operations division Maj. Aubrey Gregory suffered a gunshot wound to this hip and has been released from the hospital. Officer Robinson Desroches took a bullet to his abdomen and is now recovering post-surgery.
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