Trump says in a statement posted on his Twitter and Facebook pages that “We grieve for the officers killed in Baton Rouge today”.
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President Barack Obama urged Americans to tamp down inflammatory words and actions.
“We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric”. “We need to temper our words and open our hearts”.
The suspect has been identified as a black male named Gavin Eugene Long of Kansas City, Missouri, sources tell CBS News. Authorities were trying to ensure that there was no one in the house. One officer was sent to Baton Rouge General Medical Center and was being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, spokeswoman Meghan Parrish said. The online court records don’t say why the couple divorced, but the petition indicates they had no children and that Long had represented himself. Long, who received an honorable discharge, was listed as a “data network specialist” in the Marines. A school spokesman said university police had no interactions with him. The National Association of Police Organizations said after the Dallas shooting that America was in the midst of a war on law enforcement officers.
The two city police officers killed were identified Sunday evening: Officer Montrell Jackson and Officer Matthew Gerald.
A law enforcement source said Long “was not alone during his stay in Baton Rouge”, but it’s unclear if others he was with knew about or were actively involved in any plot.
Authorities declined to offer any possible motive for the attack.
He saw a man in a red shirt lying in an empty parking lot and “another gunman running away as more shots were being fired back and forth from several guns”.
The officers appeared to have been caught off guard, according to a recording of police radio that began with calm exchanges and then quickly turned into frantic shouting.
Almost 2½ minutes after the first report of an officer getting shot, an officer on the scene is heard saying police do not know the shooter’s location.
The lone suspected shooter is dead, according to Louisiana State Police.
“Shots fired. Officer down”, a frantic officer can be heard calling on released audio.
The recording lasts about 17 minutes and includes urgent calls for an armored personnel carrier called a BearCat. That doesn’t help anyone, it doesn’t further the conversation, it doesn’t address any injustice, perceived or real.
The violence in Baton Rouge follows the shooting death of five police officers last week in Dallas. When he’s out of uniform, he said, some people consider him a threat. A screenshot of the image was circulating widely on the internet.
The Sunday morning shootings come in the wake of the death of Alton Sterling, a black man who was shot and killed after an altercation with Baton Rouge police officers on July 5.
The head of a Cleveland police union called on Ohio Governor John Kasich to declare a state of emergency and suspend laws allowing for the open carry of firearms during the Republican convention. But the two shocking incidents are part of a recent wave of violent incidents that have escalated already tense relations between police and the black community. The killing was captured on cellphone video.
Sterling’s nephew condemned the killing of the three Baton Rouge officers.
This report was written by Kevin Freking of the Associated Press.
“My uncle wouldn’t want this”, Carter said.
A few yards from a police roadblock on Airline Highway, Keimani Gardner was in the parking lot of a warehouse store that would ordinarily be bustling on a Sunday afternoon. “I respect and appreciate everything you did for us, this city, and your job to protect and serve”, he wrote.
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Jackson and his family were planning to go to Houston soon for a vacation, Pitts said.
