Now, after the shooting deaths of five officers at a Dallas protest decrying last week’s police killings of two more black men, some experts are suggesting it’s possible the pendulum could swing from hugs back to flash-bang grenades and mass arrests.
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It was a contrast to their approach at protests outside the governor’s mansion in the wake of motorist Philando Castile’s police shooting death Wednesday in the suburb of Falcon Heights.
The recent development reignites the debate around the fairness of trials involving police killings of Black people in the United States after several earlier cases ended with no officers being indicted such as the cases of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice.
St. Paul police said on the department’s official Twitter account that an officer was injured by a firework thrown by protesters.
Police say 21 officers were hurt after protesters began throwing objects, including fireworks, rebar, bricks and a molotov cocktails. “I don’t think it’s going to stop the officer from interacting with the men and women who are out there at a peaceful protest”, said Sean Gormley, executive director of Law Enforcement Labor Services, Minnesota’s largest police union.
“But I do want to say that the people who made the decision to bring children onto the interstate made the decision not to get their children off the interstate after police directed them to multiple times”, Linders said.
Obama also cautions that if protesters paint police with a broad brush, they could lose allies for their cause. When she learned otherwise the next morning, the nation’s angst over the often deadly interactions between police officers and people of color came into sharp relief.
At the governor’s residence more than 12 hours after the freeway shutdown began, protesters were encamped Sunday morning under the watch of a few police officers.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who called the press conference, said most protests had been peaceful – with most arrests for minor offenses – and blamed outside agitators for incitements to violence. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman later called what happened a “riot.”
“Over the weekend, rioters endangered others when they stormed Interstate 94, refused to follow more than two-dozen orders from law enforcement officers to leave the freeway, and instead opted to participate in an incident that developed into a full-scale riot”, City Attorney Samuel Clark said in a statement Monday morning.
Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, a public school administrator who is considered among the movement’s loudest voices, was among 125 people arrested Saturday night in Baton Rouge, where Alton Sterling was shot and killed last week.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota Lynx basketball team wore special black warm-up shirts to their game against the Dallas Wings on Saturday night in honor of Castile, Sterling and the Dallas Police Department.
The U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing how the city responded to protests after Clark’s death.
Austin Jackson, 19, said police pepper-sprayed him and children who were in a vehicle on the interstate.
Demonstrations took place across the USA, and in London, on Friday as people marched against police brutality.
About 50 arrests were made on interstate. They are analyzing information in the journal, police said. There have been mostly peaceful demonstrations, including in Chicago, where three were arrested Saturday.
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Eugene Puryear, the march organizer, said the shooting of five police officers in Dallas on Thursday was tragic but inevitable because of police violence against African-Americans.
