A prominent Black Lives Matter activist, three journalists and more than 120 other people have been taken into custody in Louisiana over the past two days, authorities said Sunday, after protests over the fatal shooting of an African-American man by two white police officers in Baton Rouge. On Saturday, BRPD was assisted by Louisiana State Police and the sheriff’s offices from East Baton Rouge, Livingston and Ascension parishes. The station said he was booked on one count of obstruction of the highway.
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In Louisiana, some 2,000 people rallied peacefully Sunday outside the Capitol building, State Police Maj. She says she was not standing on the road.
“I have no doubt in my mind that I did nothing wrong”, said the 2015 graduate of Williams College in MA. “I have no doubt in my mind that I did nothing wrong”.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a late weekend news conference that he was “very proud” of the his state’s law enforcement response.
Authorities arrested a couple on a motorcycle driving by on the street when attention turned toward Mckesson, who was wearing bright red shoes.
“I’m under arrest, y’all”, McKesson can be heard saying as he falls to the ground.
“Police. You’re under arrest”.
“During the protest, the defendant entered the roadway and was provided another verbal order to exit the lanes of travel”. The moment of arrest, taken from that livestream, can be seen in the first video above.
Video posted on Periscope shows footage taken by McKesson in the moments leading up to his arrest.
The Advocate says Mckesson was filming live video of the protest and walking alongside Airline Highway when he was arrested.
As we reported, the protesters marched from the governor’s mansion in St. Paul to Interstate 94, and police fired tear gas at demonstrators after they blocked the roadway.
Mckesson is one of the most recognizable faces to emerge from the Black Lives Matter movement – a former educator who built a national following after leaving his then-home and job in Minneapolis in August 2014 for Ferguson, Missouri, to document the rising anger over race relations after an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by a white police officer. “The suspect said he was upset at white people”.
“They are telling us not to be violent, but they are being violent against us”, Carter said of police. “The protesters have not”. After a short standoff later in the evening, riot police arrested as many as 30 demonstrators and recovered weapons, reports AOL News. Investigators say the attacker, Micah Johnson, killed five officers and wounded seven others and two civilians before police cornered and killed him in a parking garage using a robot-delivered bomb.
“What?!” McKesson exclaims. “I’m under arrest y’all”.
Protests have spread across the country as people express outrage over the recent deaths of two black men at the hands of police in Louisiana and in Minnesota.
Among those arrested was DeRay McKesson, according to an Associated Press reporter who was at the scene.
Baton Rouge police spokesman Don Coppola blamed some violence and the large number of arrests on outside agitators. One officer lost teeth after a projectile was thrown outside police headquarters, and police also confiscated three rifles, three shotguns and two pistols during that protest, he wrote in an email.
From London and NY to Detroit, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, La., where Sterling was killed, and in St. Paul, Minn., where Castile was murdered in a suburb, many exercised their constitutional rights to peaceful protest as well as civil disobedience, snarling traffic in major cities.
Kira Marrero, a 22-year-old New Orleans resident who graduated last year from Williams College in MA, was the first protester freed from Baton Rouge’s jail on Sunday.
Arceneaux, who is black, said though she lives in a nice neighborhood, she’s anxious her 16-year-old son could be stopped playing basketball outside his own house because an officer might assume he doesn’t live there. No information was immediately available on what charges they faced or whether some people were later released.
Sharon Arceneaux, 49, of Baton Rouge, said she was protesting for the second night with her 21-year-old daughter visiting from MS, where the young woman is attending college.
Darren Bowers, 26, of Baton Rouge, arrived at the jail around 9 a.m. Sunday to see if he could get his girlfriend, 26-year-old Ariel Bates, released.
Police later went back inside their headquarters and traffic reopened.
Moore also said he’s recusing himself from any state criminal investigation into the shooting death of Sterling. “She told me that they jumped all on her and her cousin on the grass”.
Being on the streets, he said, “woke me up”.
The main concern by law enforcement was not allowing a demonstrator to be hit by a vehicle in the middle of that road, where police headquarters is located, Edmonson said.
“People are peacefully protesting”.
The tumult reached well beyond Louisiana.
Protests against the shootings of two black men by police officers shut down main arteries in a number of USA cities on Saturday, leading to numerous arrests, scuffles and confrontations between police and demonstrators.
Demonstrations also took place on Saturday, beginning near the convenience store where 37-year-old Alton Sterling was killed by police.
The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Sterling’s death, which has angered many in the black community.
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People were out in force to protest the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Some drivers stopped to offer bottles of water.
