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One person shot in second night of Milwaukee violence

After peaceful vigils by small groups of demonstrators earlier, Milwaukee police said late on Sunday night they had rescued one shooting victim, who was taken to hospital.

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When police returned with more riot gear, someone in the crowd fired shots into the air, the newspaper reported.

Police say the man shot by police was holding a gun when he turned toward an officer.

“Our police officers are doing everything they can to restore order”, he said.

Then, the scene quickly became violent and unruly: Protesters set four businesses and several police cars on fire, hurled bricks through police auto windows, threw rocks at police and vandalized bus shelters and street lights.

Protests resumed Sunday and carried into early Monday morning as protesters began swarming a Milwaukee police station, blocking the street. Police posted on Twitter three locations where they said shots were fired.

One police officer was hospitalized after a rock smashed a patrol vehicle windshield, the MPD said.

Police transport a man who was apparently shot during unrest in Milwaukee to a hospital, Sunday, Aug. 14, 2016. First responders took him to the hospital with a serious gunshot injury. That day police had stopped Smith and another man in a vehicle for reasons not known.

There was no repeat of widespread destruction of property, however.

Flynn cautioned that the shooting was still under investigation and authorities were awaiting autopsy results, but that based on the silent video from the unidentified officer’s body camera, he “certainly appeared to be within lawful bounds”.

Regarding the details surrounding the fatal shooting of Smith, according to the Times, police did not say why exactly the vehicle Smith had been in was stopped, only saying that it raised suspicion. As officers attempted to clear the crowd from blocking traffic, things turned violent.

Police say Smith had a lengthy arrest record. A still image pulled from the officer’s body camera shows “without question” that Smith had a gun in his hand when he was shot, Mayor Barrett said.

“I want our community to know that”, Mr Barrett said. During a late night news conference at which city leaders appealed for calm, Mayor Tom Barrett said the man was hit twice, in the chest and arm. “And, no matter what the circumstances, his family must be hurting”.

Police Chief Edward Flynn has declined to release the name of the officer involved thus far, but he confirmed that the officer was a 24-year-old black man.

The triggering event came Saturday afternoon, when a man fleeing police after a traffic stop was shot and killed. Seventeen people were arrested, and four officers were injured.

On Sunday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker made the National Guard available to Milwaukee police should more violence occur later in the day.

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said Smith had been arrested 13 times.

Online court records showed multiple charges against the 23-year-old Smith dating back to 2013. He was subsequently accused of pressuring the victim to recant statements that identified him as the gunman and was charged with trying to intimidate a witness, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Smith’s sister said the family wanted prosecutors to charge the officer who shot him.

The disturbances were the latest in a series of protests, a lot of them peaceful, that have broken out in USA cities over the past two years after high-profile killings by law enforcement officers in Baltimore, New York and Ferguson, Missouri.

Just hours after Smith’s death, violence broke out on the streets in the impoverished Sherman Park neighborhood on Milwaukee’s predominantly black north side.

The black man whose killing by police touched off rioting in Milwaukee was shot by a black officer.

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In December, the US Justice Department said it would carry a full review of Milwaukee’s police department, at its request, to look into areas for improvement.

Deadly police shooting sparks violent protests in Milwaukee