Police made dozens of arrests in Louisiana’s capital city during weekend protests around the country in which people angry over police killings of young black men sought to block some major interstates.
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The Department of Justice has opened a federal civil rights investigation into Sterling’s death.
The Black Lives Matter activist was arrested last night for walking on the highway in Baton Rouge during a protest.
According to East Baton Rouge Sheriff public information officer Casey Hicks, there 101 arrests overnight related to the protest.
The vast majority of them were from Louisiana and faced a single charge of obstructing a highway.
Activist DeRay Mckesson, who ran an unsuccessful bid to become Baltimore’s mayor a year ago, was live streaming a protest against the recent police shooting of Alton Sterling when he was taken into custody along a Louisiana highway.
Police patrol the streets in Louisiana.
During the confrontation, five officers suffered minor injuries – including one struck in the head with a large piece of concrete, a St. Paul Police Department spokesman tweeted. “They seemed to be very organised and peaceful”, Mr Cain said. Bowers wasn’t present when Bates was arrested near police headquarters.
By Sunday night, a few hundred people aimed for an on-ramp of Interstate 110 in Baton Rouge. According to police records obtained by The Advocate, Mckesson was charged with “simple obstruction of a highway of commerce”. But Montgomery said he also doesn’t want anyone to get hurt in the protests.
At least 198 people landed in jail in “New York and Chicago and in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana”, the latter two cities being where Castile and Sterling were respectively shot to death by local authorities, CNN reported on Sunday.
Black neighborhoods have been “willfully neglected” by city government, said Mike McClanahan, president of the NAACP branch in Baton Rouge, where 54 percent of 229,000 residents are black.
Black Lives Matter supporters said they plan to continue a sit-in in Denver in response to the police shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana through Tuesday for a total of 135 hours.
Bachman, 31, told BuzzFeed News that between 100-200 protesters were blocking traffic on a highway when law enforcement officers dressed in full riot gear showed up and told the demonstrators to move to the sidewalk.
Behind them, a squadron of officers in SWAT gear stand at the ready, some with rifles drawn. Protesting peacefully is the best way to honour those killed, he said, adding that authorities won’t allow people “to incite hate and violence”.
Bachman captured more images of the incredible demonstration in Baton Rouge this weekend. He turned toward Evans in time to see the woman and snap the photo as she took on cops in the middle of the highway outside police headquarters, her two feet rooted firmly on the pavement. “They are not operating as human beings”.
Philly.com reports (http://bit.ly/29pHEkY) protesters yelled expletives at police and walked to within inches of some. “They are being predators on our communities across America”.
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AP reporter Rebecca Santana contributed from Baton Rouge.
