 All right, Mr. Mayor, you can start at any time, sir. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Steve Shul, the mayor of Durham. And I'm here to talk to our media and our community about the events of last night in downtown Durham. Last night, somewhere between 60 and 75 people unannounced came into downtown Durham with the express purpose of inflicting damage, destruction, and violence. They damaged at least 13 buildings. They broke windows. They did tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage to businesses, to a church. And this is not something that we can accept. And we will not accept it. I fully support the important righteous protests and support of rightful justice that have followed the murder of George Floyd and the tragic death of Breonna Taylor. These protests are righteous, and we need to support. And we do support everyone's First Amendment rights to protest and to assemble. And I've been so proud in Durham of how our police department has supported these protests and helped people exercise their First Amendment rights. And so proud of people in Durham for doing so peacefully. But the people who inflicted this damage last night are not advancing the cause of justice. In fact, what they are doing is co-opting this movement for racial justice for their own purposes. All of us, there's not a single soul that doesn't know the difference between a legitimate protest and an act of vandalism. There's a very clear line that we can all see and that we must draw that line. Again, I really commend Chief C.J. Davis and our police force for the way in which they have comported themselves during this protest over the last several months. And Durham has been a shining light in that regard. Our police have been non-confrontational. They have helped our protesters protest in ways that are peaceful and powerful. They have understood that civil disobedience would take place. And they have been very understanding of that and have dealt very well with the civil disobedience that has taken place. But what happened last night is something different. It's people who came to town bent on destruction. And that's something that we cannot expect. I have spoken to our city manager, Tom Bonfield, at length about this. I've been in touch with Chief Davis about this as well this morning. And I just want our whole community to know that I am very supportive of our police to take the action that they need to take to prevent this in the future. One of the things that our courts have made clear is that our police have to be close enough to actually identify people, and of course, this should be the case, if people are going to be prosecuted for this kind of violent activity. And Chief Davis is determined to make that happen. And I am fully supportive of everything. Anybody that comes to Durham with the intention of inflicting violence and destruction of property should know that I fully support our police in stopping this activity. And I know that our community supports our police in stopping this activity. This is not activity that anyone wants, except for this small group of people who are coming to Durham, or some from Durham. I don't want to say that none are from Durham. Some are from Durham and some are not from Durham. And they're coming downtown to inflict this destructive activity, and it's not acceptable. So thank you very much. And now I'm happy to take any questions from the media. Vivian, are we having any folks from the media who are able to ask questions or would like to? So far no one has asked to ask a question yet? All right. If I'm muted to ask a question. So if you would like to ask a question, I believe you can unmute yourself. Is that correct, Vivian? That is correct. All right. Mayor, this is a crystal price with CBS 17. Can we get clarification on how many businesses were actually hit, and was there any looting that occurred? My understanding is that there were 13 businesses that were hit, and that account could go up. I don't think we know them all yet. And my understanding is also that there was not any looting, which is good, very important. And also, I don't know if Chief Davis could answer. How does the police department plan to handle the next protest? Is there anything that will be done different to try to prevent any more vandalism like this? I'm going to ask Chief Davis if she would like to comment on that. Yes, I would. As most of you know, and to answer your question, the Durham Police Department has taken a non-confrontational stance on all of our protests and really trust in our community to be able to exercise their First Amendment rights without intervention from the police department. We have also been very diligent in ensuring that we take action on any intelligence or any information that's been provided to us in advance so that we could be ready to respond. Unfortunately, in this particular situation, we didn't receive advance notice of any type of group, that especially a group that claims to be an anarchist group visiting our city. We absolutely have the resources if we were made aware to respond in a timely fashion. By the time the Durham Police Department called officers in to respond to this particular group, they dispersed. Most of the damage had already been done. However, we plan to have more of a visible presence. That is the strategy that we feel that we have to take at this point, not in an antagonistic way, but in a manner that our community members know that we are there and we're paying attention. What we also don't wanna do is create a confrontation while we have other citizens and other visitors to our city who may be enjoying a peaceful dinner or just the sights of our wonderful downtown area. And then they get caught up in the fray of a violent confrontation between the police and individuals like those that showed up last night. And I have to commend our local protesters, those individuals who have been out, we have had minimal damage over the months, over several months. So last night sort of caught us by surprise, but unfortunately we will have to be a little bit more visible as it relates to our presence, especially until we get past this current climate of individuals just feeling that they need to express themselves. Last night, I don't believe that that expression had anything to do with the verdict and the outcome of the Breonna Taylor case. It had everything to do with taking advantage of an opportunity to express other ideology. Is the city considering putting a curfew in place? No, not at this time. I think that I would certainly take any advice, always take the chief's advice on anything like that, but we haven't had the need for a curfew in Durham and I don't anticipate any need for a curfew. Our residents have been various. The chief says our residents have been extremely constructive even under very difficult circumstances, even under very stressful circumstances. The fight for racial justice is critically important and our residents have been expressing themselves powerfully, but they've been doing so in a way that has, as the chief says, we've been very, very impressed and proud of. So we see no need for a curfew at this time. What we do see a need for is for those people who are bent on inflicting this kind of destruction, not to be doing it. And we don't need a general curfew to do that. Hi, Mayor Schuyl, this is Charlie from the News and Observer. Do you know, can you clarify what you know about the group behind this? Like who they are or just any information you had about them? I'll speak briefly on one aspect of that and then I'll ask the chief if she would like to speak further. I'm not sure how much that she wants to get into that, but I'll tell you one thing about it, Charlie, that I think is important. The folks that were just inflicting the damage last night were white. I just wanna be really clear about that. And I believe that that is an indication of the fact that this is an attempt to co-opt a racial justice movement. And again, this is not something that we can accept. Of course, it's important for white people to be on the side of racial justice all the time and to do that daily work that's so necessary and important to make racial justice in our country real. But that's very different than what these folks last night were doing. Chief, do you wanna comment at all on anything more about what we know about that group? You know, we don't know exactly who this group is associated with. We know the characteristics of anarchist groups and the wearing of all black, the carrying of umbrellas to hide various types of illicit activity, the mass, changing clothes after it's all done quickly, has everything to do with, it wasn't a mixed group. Most of the individuals that were in this group were involved in the criminal activity. They were involved in the vandalism. So this was very unusual and different characteristics from groups that we've seen protests here in the city of Durham. Even if we have individuals that are actors that sort of intermingle with our local peaceful protesters, we're able to identify those individuals relatively easily. This was a group that was in a whole made up of individuals who planned to riot and cause destruction. And their plan was to obviously get in quick, do damage quickly, and by the time there was a unified response of the numbers that we needed in order to engage this group, there was a dispersal of the group. So we don't know yet, we are still looking at, there's video footage that we're taking advantage of looking at to see if we can't identify any of the individuals that participated in that activity last night. Thank you, Chief. Other questions? Other questions by members of the media? All right, I'll ask one more time before the Chief and I sign off. Are there any other questions about this by members of our press who are with us today? We're so glad you're here with us. Thank you. Is there any word on if there will be another protest tonight, or when the next protest will be here in Durham? I can answer that right now. We don't have any indications of other protests. And just for the record, the Durham police, anytime there is a national type of statement or decision that may cause a reaction in our community, we are ensuring that we have folks on standby. We were prepared last night for some of our usual types of protests with minimal staffing, but certainly we're not prepared to respond to the level of activity that we did last night. We don't know what the next days could look like. So the Durham Police Department will be very strategic and do our, do regard in ensuring that we have individuals close enough on standby to respond quickly if we see any type of criminal activity. We will not tolerate criminal activity and violence in our city, or any type of activity that will cause harm or destruction of property or harm to other individuals who are visiting our downtown space. So just know that we're prepared to respond. We'll be working with our court systems as well so that we can find ways to hold people accountable. I think that's very important so that people don't feel that they can come to the city of Durham and just carry on any kind of way and victimize individuals and that there not be any type of repercussions. I wanna just offer my full support to what the Chief just said. Again, this is not acceptable and we can't accept it. And the Chief has my full support in actions that the Police Department will need to be taking. Thank you. Any further questions? Chief Davis, hi, this is Josh Zach from WPTF Radio. I wanted to ask the question again, going back to the groups that were involved in the vandalism last night. You said you don't know exactly yet who is responsible but they carry the signature of the anarchists and you went through some of the criteria regarding that. Will you be looking closer at the video footage to try and identify anybody and have so levy charges, is that possible? If we are able to leverage the video footage that might be, we're still trying to identify where various cameras are in the downtown space that we may have access to, we absolutely will if we can make clear identification of individuals who may have been involved. And not only to identify individuals but get more information about the group itself. Any more questions? All right, I wanna thank everybody for being here. I wanna thank Chief Davis for her work and I wanna say once again, in Durham, we understand very, very deeply in support. Righteous protests that are peaceful. We understand and support civil disobedience but we do not understand or support violence. And I know that I speak not just for myself, not just for our police department, not just for our city council but for our whole community. That's not the Durham way and we need to make sure that that's not happening here in Durham. So thank you very much for everyone for being here.