A woman holds a placard during a mourning for the police personnel killed by snipers in Dallas, the United States, July 8, 2016.
Advertisement
Prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson was arrested in Baton Rouge late Saturday night while attending a protest of the officer-involved shooting death of Alton Sterling.
In Minnesota, where crowds denounced Castile’s death during a traffic stop, an unruly protester flung fireworks at cops patrolling the St. Paul rally and throngs of demonstrators opposing police belted a chorus of “Purple Rain”.
She said she spent some time protesting in Ferguson, Missouri, after the controversial police shooting of Michael Brown, a black man who was unarmed.
According to his live Periscope video, Mckesson was arrested when a police officer approached him from behind and said he was under arrest after he and other protesters were walking on the side of the street.
On Friday, police in the city of Rochester, New York arrested 74 people during a “Black Lives Matter” demonstration, citing “disorderly conduct”.
Ryan Kailath, a reporter with WWNO, a public radio station in New Orleans was arrested on one count of simple obstruction of a highway, Sgt. Don Coppola confirmed. The US Justice Department has launched a civil rights investigation.
Elsewhere, protests in downtown Chicago resulted in three arrests, with pending charges, according to police.
Officers faced down hundreds of demonstrators near a ramp leading to an interstate highway in Baton Rouge on Sunday night before another squad in riot gear arrived and took dozens into custody.
Moments later, she said, two officers forcefully arrested Mckesson.
Photos and video posted on social media by witnesses and journalists showed protesters being arrested in different parts of the city by police officers who told the crowds they were no longer holding peaceful demonstrations or that they were blocking major thoroughfares.
Shouting “No justice! No peace!” roughly 1,000 protesters gathered outside the police department, waving homemade signs as passing cars honked their support.
“I think he’s talking to me, y’all”, McKesson said.
Protestors across the USA continued Friday night, as people decried police brutality over the killing of two African-American men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, earlier this week. McMillon said she didn’t know Sterling to carry a gun and doesn’t believe he had one with him that night.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards told a news conference earlier on Sunday that he was proud of how the police had handled the protests so far, saying law enforcement had responded in a “moderate” manner.
In central California, several hundred protesters blocked several intersections as they marched against police brutality in central Fresno. They haven’t been shutting down traffic.The police have been violent tonight.
The Baton Rouge police spokesman, Sgt. Don Coppola, blamed some violence and the large number of arrests on outside agitators. She says she hasn’t spoken to him and doesn’t have any information about circumstances of his arrest.
“I’ve been in active in the community for years”.
“Every second my son goes to stumble, he’s breaking his neck to get to him”, McMillon said.
“It’s an American value and a fundamental Constitutional right to freely express our views, to assemble, to speak, and that’s what’s been happening until last night when the inexplicable actions of a madman took the lives of five police officers and injured many others”. “We just want peace”.
People gather in the intersection in front of a convenience store in Baton Rouge, La., Thursday, July 7, 2016.
Smoke bombs were used on 200 protesters as police in riot gear slowly moved in.
Members of law enforcement have a very hard job and the vast majority conduct themselves honorably as they protect and serve our communities.
Advertisement
Eugene Puryear, the march organizer, said the shooting of five police officers in Dallas on Thursday was tragic but inevitable because of police violence against African-Americans.
