June 3, 2020 640 PM
TEXAS — In response to ongoing protests over police brutality, President Donald Trump has said he wants to dispatch U.S. military forces to “dominate” protesters.
Although state governors routinely deploy the National Guard in response to unrest or natural disasters, it’s much rarer for the president to deploy actual national troops.
“If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents,” he said at a news conference on Monday. “I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”
Governor Greg Abbott turned down the offer in a news conference with Dallas and Fort Worth leaders on Tuesday — a rare rebuke to the president at a time when the two men have lately been aligned on the issue of “reopening” the economy.
“We will not be asking the United States military to come into the state of Texas,” he said. “We know that Texans can take care of Texans.” He added the state has “tremendous police forces.”
It remains to be seen what will happen if Trump forces the issue, as his own statement suggested he might. But given that the two men are typically political allies, such a move seems unlikely — at least for now.
The purpose of the news conference was to address ongoing protests and growing civil unrest over the death of George Floyd, a black man from Houston who was killed in Minneapolis late last month after a police officer kneeled on his neck for around nine minutes.
Minneapolis Police were responding to a “forgery in progress,” and in video of the incident, Floyd can be heard telling officers he can’t breathe. The incident was the latest death of an unarmed black person at the hands of police, galvanizing protests across the country.
During his new conference, Greg Abbott said Floyd’s killing was a “horrific act of police brutality” and said “we must ensure that it never happens here in Texas.” Austin police on Sunday critically injured a 20-year-old black protester.
Governor Greg Abbott has taken a number of measures during the recent protests, including deploying National Guard troops and Department of Public Safety officers and announcing federal prosecutions for people who “come to Texas from out of state to engage in looting,” according to a news release on Monday.
At the news conference, Abbott stressed that “violence and vandalism is never the answer” and did not belong “anywhere in the state of Texas.” He also claimed that “Texas is recognized as a national leader in criminal justice reform.”
Abbott again blamed some of the unrest on outside agitators, without pointing to any incidents, claiming, “Some of the violence we’re seeing is not being done by people that reside in Dallas or even in Texas.”
Of the 185 arrested by Dallas Police Department during the protests, 172 were local, according to arrest records provided by Mayor Eric Johnson’s office, as reported by the Texas Tribune. Elsewhere in the state, two of the 53 protesters arrested by Austin Police were from out of state, according to information released by the department.
