As a race, as a culture, we’re standing up for something.
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In announcing the Justice Department investigation, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards was accompanied by black Democrats from Baton Rouge who praised him and others for quickly asking the federal government to get involved.
The crowd of approximately 300 people gathered in Windrush Square before marching to the nearby police station, and then through neighbouring streets.
“The one conclusion that I can come to this morning is we have to embrace diversity”, Goodjoin said.
Tragically, the conversation on social media on Wednesday afternoon proved otherwise, as a video taken by the fiancee of Philando Castile went live on Facebook seconds after a police officer in Minnesota shot her boyfriend in the passenger seat of her vehicle. He died a short time later at a hospital.
“But Philando Castile did that”, Scott interrupted, “and they still shot him four times with his wife and kid in the auto”. They begin at the hiring phase, they begin with creating universal standards for hiring law enforcement officers, and they also include standards of training.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is leading the investigation, has not released details about the incident.
A Texas organizer of Black Lives Matter, Ashton P. Woods, said the repeated shootings by police are pushing some unstable people over the edge. St. Paul Public Schools said in a statement that Castile was a “team player who maintained great relationships with staff and students alike”. Yanez fired the shots.
He said police were five to 10 feet in front of him when the first shots rang out. As the author Michelle Alexander and others have pointed out, African Americans use drugs and committ serious criminal offenses, less than do whites on a per capita basis, but represents almost half of the prison population in the United States. Rep. John Lewis, a veteran of the civil rights movement wept in a Congressional Black Caucus news conference called to push for gun control. He also said that he’d decide whether to turn the case over to a grand jury once the state presents its findings to his office.
Seven other police officers and two civilians were wounded in the ambush in downtown Dallas on Thursday night.
During the standoff with police negotiators Thursday, the shooter invoked the slogan, saying he was “upset about black lives matter”, according to Dallas Police Chief David Brown.
Formed in 2012 after the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Florida, Black Lives Matter’s national profile exploded in mid-2014 after white police officer Darren Wilson shot dead unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson. Officers crouched beside vehicles, armored SWAT team vehicles arrived and a helicopter hovered overhead. “We have seen bad, awful senseless things”, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Friday, describing the latest scenes of horror and loss. He says protesters were peaceful and the shootings “terrorized them too”.
Republican state Rep. Roger Williams blamed the words and actions of President Barack Obama and other prominent leaders for contributing to the deadly violence.
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“Black Lives Matter”, “No justice, no peace”, “The people, united, will never be divided”, “Hey hey, ho ho, racist cops have got to go”. A few online commentators celebrated the shootings.
