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NYC Mayor de Blasio's daughter arrested during protests

The police report claimed Chiara de Blasio refused to leave a Manhattan street cleared by officers because people were throwing things.

NEW YORK — Editor's Note: The video above is from May 30, 2020.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's daughter was arrested amid protests in the city against police brutality. 

Since the protests began days ago in New York City, at least 790 people have been arrested, 33 officers have been injured and 27 police vehicles have been damaged or destroyed, police said. There were no major injuries reported.

The mayor's daughter, Chiara de Blasio, 25, was among those arrested Saturday night, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The arrest report, obtained by the New York Post, said she refused to leave a Manhattan street cleared by officers because people were throwing things. Chiara de Blasio, who is black, was later given a court summons and released.

The mayor, who is white, said Monday that he didn't learn of her arrest until media reports emerged Sunday. He said his daughter told him she didn't do anything wrong. 

“She was very clear that she believed she was following the instructions of police officers and doing what they were asking... absolutely, she was abundantly clear she was peacefully protesting, not doing anything that would provoke a negative response,” he said, adding that he admired her for peacefully “trying to change something that she thought was unjust."

RELATED: Videos show NYPD cruisers lurching into crowd of demonstrators

Credit: AP
Police detain protesters as they march down the street during a solidarity rally for George Floyd, Saturday, May 30, 2020, in New York. Protests were held throughout the city over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on May 25. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Thousands of people marched and many protesters and officers tried to keep the peace after days of unrest that left police cars burned and hundreds of people under arrest.

Demonstrators paraded through multiple neighborhoods, chanting, kneeling in the street, and falling silent for a minute in front of the neon-adorned NYPD station in Times Square in honor of people killed by police.

Through most of the day, in most of the city, a tense truce held, with officers keeping their distance and occasionally dropping to a knee in a gesture of respect.

But after dark, there were ugly confrontations.

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said peaceful demonstrations were “hijacked” by people with violent intent.

At a briefing Sunday, the department's top intelligence and counter-terrorism official, John Miller, said some anarchist groups gathered supplies of rocks and bottles and used scouts to spot vandalism targets.

New York City lawyers, one of whom went to Princeton, the other to New York University Law School, were hit with federal charges that they threw a Molotov cocktail into an unoccupied patrol car Saturday.

“We’re going to make sure that everyone has the right to peacefully protest and assemble,” Shea said. “But we are not going to tolerate destruction of property, having our officers put into harm’s way or any civilians put into harm’s way."

Similar protests flared around the nation in response to the Minnesota death of George Floyd, a black man who died Monday after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck.

RELATED: Unrest overshadows peaceful US protests for another night

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