Police-community relations have been especially tense in the Louisiana capital since 37-year-old Alton Sterling was killed by white officers earlier this month after a scuffle at a convenience store. “Right now we are trying to get our arms around everything”, Holden said. Law enforcement officials were investigating whether more than one gunman was involved, though superintendent of the Louisiana State Police Col. Michael D. Edmonson said there was no “active shooter scenario”, CNN reported.
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He also spoke by telephone to the families of two black men shot in separate incidents in Baton Rouge and suburban St. Paul, Minnesota.
President Barack Obama urged Americans to tamp down inflammatory words and actions.
President Barack Obama denounced the police killings in Baton Rouge during a news conference Sunday afternoon, calling on the country to unite against violence. The National Association of Police Organizations said after the Dallas shooting that America was in the midst of a war on law enforcement officers.
It was the fourth high-profile deadly encounter in the United States involving police over the past two weeks.
The shooting – which happened just before 9 a.m., less than 1 mile from police headquarters – comes amid spiraling tensions across the city – and the country – between the black community and police.
“Only we can prove, through words and through deeds, that we will not be divided”, he said.
According to radio traffic, Baton Rouge police answered a report of a man with an assault rifle and were met by gunfire – and for several long minutes, didn’t know where it was coming from.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, expressed grief in a Facebook post.
The shooter is believed to be down, officers on the ground said the scene is “contained”.
Less than a week ago, he noted, he spoke at the memorial service for five police officers shot and killed in Dallas. Police said they were using a specialized robot to check for explosives near the body.
He saw a man in a red shirt lying in an empty parking lot and “another gunman running away as more shots were being fired back and forth from several guns”.
Obama acknowledged that one of the surviving police officers remains in critical condition, and that the gunman’s motives are unknown, as have been reported. “Attacks on police are an attack on all of us, and the rule of law that makes society possible”, Obama said, speaking from the White House press briefing room.
“I can’t explain what brought us here”, she said.
Hudson County Sheriff Frank X. Schillari responded to the shootings by offering prayers and condolences to the slain officers families and wished a “speedy recovery” to the three other officers. He also said the country would have to “just grind it out” in solving the tensions.
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As he said following the Dallas shooting, Obama reiterated that this would not be the last example of a person that tries to make the country turn against each other.
