Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted police officers across New York on Friday for using "frightening" violence against peaceful protesters and reporters while distancing himself from Mayor de Blasio's decision to put the city on a strict curfew amid mass demonstrations over George Floyd's death.
Cuomo started his daily briefing in Albany by playing a couple of videos of the violence _ one of city officers using pepper spray against protesters with their hands up and another of riot cops in Buffalo pushing a 75-year-old man so hard in the chest that he tumbled backward and slammed the back of his head against the pavement.
"It's just fundamentally offensive, and frightening. It's just frightening," Cuomo said. "Who are we? How did we get to this place? Incidents of pushing the press ... Where are we? Who are we?"
Cuomo's pushback contrasted his comments a day earlier, when he disputed whether cops had been violent at all and suggested it was "a little offensive" for a reporter to ask him of a video of NYPD officers bludgeoning peaceful protesters with batons.
Taking a sharply different approach Friday, Cuomo also disassociated himself from de Blasio's decision earlier this week to extend the citywide curfew and make it 8 instead of 11 p.m. _ an order critics say have worsened the police violence.
"I announced the curfew with Mayor de Blasio in New York City after a night of looting and craziness at 11. The mayor then revised the curfew to 8 and extended it, which I had nothing to do with," Cuomo said.
