“Attacks on police are an attack on all of us, and the rule of law that makes society possible”, Obama said, issuing an official statement from the White House press briefing room.
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Now police across the country are taking precautions. All meals and personal breaks will also be taken in pairs.
Long posted a video online that seems to show him distributing his book to people on the street, and his cousin said he believed that is what Long may have been doing in Baton Rouge.
Since then, other departments, including St. Anthony and Maplewood, also have teamed its officers for safety.
The Baton Rouge area’s blood supply was already low, as it typically is in the summertime while people are gone on vacations, said Lisa Mobley, donor services coordinator at the LifeShare Blood Services facility on North Boulevard where several people lined up Sunday afternoon to donate.
Obama urged a stop to the bloodshed.
“Only we can prove, through words and through deeds, that we will not be divided”, the President said Sunday.
“If y’all wanna keep protesting, do that, but for the serious ones, the real ones, the alpha ones, we know what it’s going to take. That’s how this country gets united”.
Police said the gunman was killed at the scene. We face many challenges, but we can overcome them all by standing together.
Investigators say Gavin Long, a decorated ex-marine, acted alone when he exchanged gunfire with officers at a gas station, killing three officers and injuring two others. Long was wielding an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle, law enforcement sources told CNN.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards told a news conference it was an “absolutely unspeakable, heinous attack”. But he would not say how many or give details and stressed that the interviews do not mean that those people were involved in the shooting.
A witness described hearing at least 25 to 30 gunshots when the shooting began.
Two “suspicious looking” people were detained in Addis after callers reported seeing two men in all black go into the Walmart in Port Allen and change their clothes.
It was not immediately clear how Long, who was black, ended up in Baton Rouge, where police killed him in a shootout on his birthday, according to media reports.
The Guardian has documented at least 587 people killed by police across the U.S. so far this year.
Just days earlier, one of the murdered officers posted an emotional Facebook message about the challenges of police work in the current environment.
“I swear to God I love this city, but I wonder if this city loves me”, Jackson wrote.
In the message, Jackson said he was physically and emotionally exhausted and complained that while in uniform, he gets nasty looks.
On July 8, Jackson wrote on Facebook about the recent “trying times”. Garafola worked with the sheriff’s office for 24 years and was a married father of four. Dallas police were defending protesters in that city when the gunman opened fire on them. Another officer was being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, hospital officials said. The third officer killed Sunday, an East Baton Rouge Parish deputy, was 45 years old.
That address also appears in local court records for a Gavin Long in two separate civil cases. He killed five police officers in Dallas, and a criminal investigation is ongoing about his military record.
He served in the Marines from August 2005 to August 2010, and rose to the rank of sergeant, deputy public affairs officer for the US Marines Yvonne Carlock said.
Long, who received an honorable discharge, was listed as a “data network specialist” in the Marines. He was deployed to Iraq in 2008.
He left a long trail of information online about his beliefs under the pseudonym Cosmo Setepenra.
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Officers investigate the scene of a shooting in Baton Rouge. Then a black gunman opened fire during a protest against the police shootings in Dallas, killing five police officers.
