NEW YORK
Protesters took to the New York City streets Friday for a third straight night of demonstrations after a grand jury decided a white police officer would not face charges for fatally choking an unarmed black man.
About 200 protesters gathered in Columbus Circle, a heavily trafficked intersection at the southwest corner of Central Park, before heading down Fifth Avenue.
They converged on the nearby Apple Store, descending its spiral stairs while chanting "How do you spell racist? NYPD," "Black Lives Matter" and "I can't breathe," the last words of 43-year-old Eric Garner, an asthmatic who died July 17 after being placed in a chokehold, a banned police department maneuver.
Once inside the store, demonstrators briefly staged a die-in that brought the store's operations to a halt. A die-in is a form of civil disobedience where demonstrators lie down in a public space and remain still, as if dead. They countinued their march on the sidewalks of the avenue before heading toward Union Square, about 2 miles south of Times Square.
Largely peaceful and loosely organized protests continued throughout the night, with separate groups of demonstrators staging die-ins at Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan and a Macy's department store near Union Square.
Unlike the first two nights of the unrest, no arrests were reported in New York on Friday night.
Demonstrations also erupted in other U.S. cities including Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami.
A New York grand jury declined Wednesday to indict white police officer Daniel Pantaleo for using the chokehold while attempting to arrest Garner for allegedly selling illegal cigarettes outside of a Staten Island store.
Garner's death was ruled a homicide by New York’s medical examiner, according to the official autopsy.
The New York grand jury's decision, which came a week after a Missouri grand jury decided not to prosecute another white officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen in the city of Ferguson in August, triggered a fresh wave of unrest over perceived injustices within the U.S. justice system.
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