While numerous demonstrations nationwide remained peaceful, scuffles broke out overnight Saturday in St. Paul, Minnesota, where protesters clashed with police on Interstate 94.
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Five police officers were killed after a sniper opened fire Thursday night in Dallas during a protest against the killings of black men last week by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota.
The Minnesota protest was among several sizable demonstrations across the country Saturday expressing outrage at the deaths of Castile and of Alton Sterling, another black man, who was killed by the police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Almost 50 people have been formally charged with rioting in connection with a protest that shut down Interstate 94 for more than five hours Saturday night.
“We are now in the process of cleaning debris from the freeway”, the St. Paul Police Department said in a statement.
A almost all-white congregation of about 170 filled Falcon Heights United Church of Christ for an evening service of “prayer and lament”, a half-mile from where Castile was killed.
Valerie Castile, the mother of Philando Castile, issued a statement Sunday calling for protesters to remain peaceful.
“That will not be tolerated – we don’t operate like that in Louisiana”, Edwards said. Police say 21 officers were hurt, including an officer who suffered a broken vertebrae after being struck by a chunk of concrete.
Hundreds of demonstrators took to the street in London Sunday to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement. The 32-year-old school cafeteria supervisor told officers during a traffic stop that he had a gun in the vehicle and a permit to use it, and one of them shot him when he reached for his wallet, according to his girlfriend, who live-streamed video of the immediate aftermath on Facebook. 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. He says the 25-year-old Army veteran wrote the letters “RB”, and that investigators are looking through things found in his suburban Dallas home to try to figure out what he may have meant by that.
Levy-Pounds said many African-Americans here had still been coming to terms with the fatal shooting of Jamar Clark by the Minneapolis police in 2015 and the decision not to charge the officers involved.
Another 52 people were arrested off the highway at about 4 a.m., and face public nuisance and unlawful assembly charges. His fiancée, Diamond Reynolds, live-streamed the aftermath of the shooting, sparking outrage across the nation.
In Washington, on the fourth night of protests, several hundred protesters who had marched two miles to Union Station accepted without complaint the news from organizers and police that they could not march on the Capitol without a permit.
Gov. Mark Dayton, whose official residence on Summit Avenue has become a focus for many protesters over the past several days, said Sunday that “the occupation and shutting down of Interstate 94 last night were unlawful and extremely risky”.
London resident Aifur Rahman, who described himself on social media as a mathematics graduate, said the event was astonishing in its protest against police shootings in the United States. He said he was trying to move the crowd along and keep the peace. She said he was reaching for his wallet when the officer shot him.
There have been many peaceful protests over the last few days in the wake of Philando Castile’s death.
“It brought many communities together and gave everyone a sense of unity in the fight against oppression and racial inequality”, he said.
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The U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing how the city responded to protests after Clark’s death. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating, has not said why he was pulled over or what happened during the traffic stop.
