Looters Strike at Macy’s and the Heart of Manhattan as City Reels. The mayhem in the central business district — long an emblem of New York’s stature — was a new blow to a city already weakened by the virus outbreak.

New York Times ^ | June 2, 2020 | Christina Goldbaum, Liam Stack and Alex Traub

[karpov]

The looters tore off the plywood that boarded up Macy’s flagship store in Herald Square, swarming by the dozens inside to steal whatever they could find before being chased down by the police. Others smashed the windows at a Nike store, grabbing shirts, jeans and zip-up jackets. They crashed into a Coach store,ransacked a Bergdorf Goodman branch and destroyed scores of smaller storefronts along the way.

The eruption of looting in the central business district of Manhattan — long an emblem of the New York’s stature and prowess — struck yet another blow to a city reeling from the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak.

The mayhem late on Monday night and into the early morning marred otherwise peaceful protests conducted by thousands of people across the city in the wake of the death of George Floyd, and it touched off a new crisis for Mayor Bill de Blasio. On Tuesday his fellow Democrat and frequent rival, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, criticized the city’s response, saying, “The NYPD and the mayor did not do their job last night.”

Beginning Monday afternoon and growing wilder as night fell, small bands of young people dressed mostly in black pillaged chain stores, upscale boutiques and kitschy trinket stores in Midtown Manhattan, as the police at first struggled in vain to impose order.

Within hours, the normally vibrant center of wealth and upscale retail had descended into an almost clichéd vision of disorder: Streets were speckled with broken glass and trash can fires. Bands of looters pillaged stores without regard for nearby police officers. The screech of sirens echoed between skyscrapers.

By the early morning hours, a sense of lawlessness had set in.

[gcparent]

Yes. Long walk.

[polymuser]

Yep, hearing Trump Tower’s a target now.