Curfews are being imposed for New York City on the evenings and overnights of Monday and Tuesday following several nights of looting, vandalism, fires, and clashes between some demonstrators and police after largely peaceful protests.

In a joint statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the curfew is running from 11 p.m. Monday to 5 a.m. Tuesday and be accompanied by a doubling of NYPD officers assigned to keep order.

Cuomo and de Blasio said those officers will be deployed to lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, areas where they said "violence and property damage occurred” during Sunday night's protests.

Calling into to NY1 on Monday night, de Blasio said a curfew would be in place for the city the following day as well, from 8 p.m. Tuesday to 5 a.m. Wednesday.

His announcement came after looting was seen and reported in multiple boroughs in the evening, a few hours before the first curfew was set to begin.

Until Monday night, the city had not enacted a curfew order in recent memory.

At multiple locations in the city, police did not appear to enforce the curfew when it went into effect. Waves of protesters continued to gather around 11 p.m. in front of the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, and people were seen walking around Macy's in Herald Square.

 

For days, the NYPD has struggled to keep order amid rising tensions with protesters who have taken to city streets to protest police brutality following the death of George Floyd.

Cuomo said Monday the National Guard was on standby for deployment if needed, but he said he believed the NYPD has enough personnel to handle ongoing unrest in parts of the city.

Thousands of essential workers are still expected to travel to work during the early morning hours. The mayor said they would be exempt from the curfew.

Protests have been taking place in over a hundred cities across the country, and curfews have been enacted in some localities with mixed results.

Here at home, protests have remained peaceful for the most part during daytime hours, but demonstrations have grown violent at night as tensions escalate between officers and some demonstrators.

Cuomo said in the WAMC interview that there will also be an increased police presence Monday.

On Sunday, several incidents captured on video showed police officers charging into seemingly peaceful crowds. There’s video of a police officer who can be seen drawing his gun near a crowd. Another video showed groups of police officers using their batons on protestors crouching on the pavement.

De Blasio condemned some of the police interactions on Monday, acknowledging that some police behavior has been inappropriately forceful and counterproductive to deescalation.

The NYPD said more than 200 people were arrested, some for looting, Sunday night into early Monday.