Tag Archives: Protests

Sniper was plotting larger assault, taunted Police

Demonstrators stand outside the Louisiana State Capitol building during a rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

By Brian Thevenot and Erwin Seba

DALLAS (Reuters) – The U.S. military veteran who fatally shot five Dallas police officers last week was plotting a larger assault, authorities said, disclosing how he had taunted negotiators and written on a wall in his own blood before being killed.

Protests against U.S. police tactics continued for a third straight day on Sunday, with scores arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after authorities warned that violence during street demonstrations over the fatal police shootings of two black men last week would not be tolerated.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown told CNN on Sunday Micah X. Johnson had improvised as he used “shoot-and-move” tactics to gun down officers during a demonstration on Thursday, the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001.

Brown said a search of Johnson’s home showed the gunman had practised using explosives, and that other evidence suggested he wanted to use them against law enforcement officers.

“We’re convinced that this suspect had other plans,” he said. The fatal police shootings of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana last week led the 25-year-old Texas shooter to “fast-track” his attack, Brown said.

Johnson, a black veteran who served in Afghanistan, took advantage of a spontaneous march that began toward the end of the protest over those killings. Moving ahead of the rally in a black Tahoe SUV, he stopped when he saw a chance to use “high ground” to target police, Brown said.

Johnson was killed by a bomb-equipped robot but Brown said before then he sang, laughed at and taunted officers, and said he wanted to “kill white people” in retribution for police killings of black people. “He seemed very much in control and very determined to hurt other officers,” the police chief said.

SURPRISE ATTACK

Brown said police were caught off guard when protesters broke away from Thursday’s demonstration, and were thus exposed as they raced to block off intersections ahead of the marchers.

Johnson’s military training helped him to shoot and move rapidly, “triangulating” his fire with multiple rounds so that police at first feared there were several shooters.

Brown defended the decision to use a robot to kill him, saying that “about a pound of C4” explosive was attached to it.

He said Johnson had scrawled the letters “RB” in his own blood on a wall before dying. “We’re trying to figure out through looking at things in his home what those initials mean,” Brown said.

The U.S. Department of Defense and a lawyer who represented Johnson did not return requests for information on his military history or the status of his discharge.

PROTESTS, ARRESTS, MEMORIALS

The mass shooting amplified a turbulent week in the United States, which was again convulsed by the issues of race, gun violence and use of lethal force by police.

Even as officials and activists condemned the shootings and mourned the slain officers, hundreds of people were arrested on Saturday and Sunday as new protests against the use of deadly force by police flared in U.S. cities.

Protesters faced off with police officers wearing gas masks on Sunday evening in Baton Rouge. Media, citing Baton Rouge police, reported that at least 48 people were taken into custody after demonstrators clashed with police following a peaceful march to the state capitol.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, 21 officers were injured on Saturday when they were pelted with rocks, bottles, construction material and fireworks.

Three countries have warned their citizens to stay on guard when visiting U.S. cities rocked by the protests.

Speaking in Madrid during a European tour, U.S. President Barack Obama said attacks on police over racial bias would hurt Black Lives Matter, a civil rights movement that emerged from the recent police killings of African-Americans but has been criticized for vitriolic social media postings against police, some of them sympathetic to Johnson.

“Whenever those of us who are concerned about failures of the criminal justice system attack police, you are doing a disservice to the cause,” the United States’ first black president told a news conference.

At a Texas hospital, wounded mother Shetamia Taylor sobbed as she thanked police who shielded her and her son in Dallas as bullets flew.

And at Dallas’ Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Roman Catholic parishioners gathered on Sunday for their weekly service and to remember the fallen officers.

“I would like you to join me in asking: ‘Who is my neighbor?'” the Rev. Eugene Azorji, who is black, told the congregation. “Those who put their lives on the line every day to bring a security and peace, they represent our neighbor.”

A candlelight vigil is set for 8 p.m. on Monday in Dallas City Hall plaza.

(Additional reporting by Ernest Scheyder, Jason Lange, David Bailey, Ruthy Munoz and Lisa Garza; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Daniel Wallis; Editing by Peter Cooney, Chris Michaud and Paul Tait)

Protests on Saturday shut down main highways, numerous arrests

People gather on Interstate 94 to protest the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by Minneapolis area police during a traffic stop, in St. Paul, Minnesota,

By Bryn Stole and David Bailey

BATON ROUGE, La./MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) – Protests against the shootings of two black men by police officers shut down main arteries in a number of U.S. cities on Saturday, leading to numerous arrests, scuffles and injuries in confrontations between police and demonstrators.

Undeterred by heightened concerns about safety at protests after a lone gunman killed five police officers in Dallas Thursday night, organizers went ahead with marches in the biggest metropolis, New York City, and Washington D.C., the nation’s capital, among other cities.

It was the third straight day of widespread protests after the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling, 37, by police in Baton Rouge on Tuesday and the death of Philando Castile, 32, on Wednesday night in a St. Paul, Minnesota suburb, cities which both saw heated protests on Saturday.

The most recent shooting deaths by police come after several years of contentious killings by law enforcement officers, including that of Michael Brown, a teenager whose death in the summer of 2014 caused riots and weeks of protests in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.

On Saturday evening, hundreds of protesters shut down I-94, a major thoroughfare linking the Twin Cities, snarling traffic.

Protesters, told to disperse, threw rocks, bottles and construction rebar at officers, injuring at least three, St. Paul police said. Police made arrests and used smoke bombs and marking rounds to disperse the crowd.

Protesters at the scene said police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Police said early on Sunday they had begun clearing the highway of debris in preparation for re-opening it.

A march in Baton Rouge saw scuffles between riot police and Black Panther activists, several of whom carried shotguns. Louisiana law allows for weapons to be carried openly.

After a short standoff later in the evening, riot police arrested as many as 30 demonstrators and recovered weapons. Prominent black activist and former Baltimore mayoral candidate Deray McKesson was among those arrested.

Protests also took place Saturday in Nashville, where protesters briefly blocked a road, and in Indianapolis. A rally in San Francisco also briefly blocked a freeway ramp, according to local media.

Hundreds of protesters marched from City Hall to Union Square in New York. The crowd swelled to around a thousand people, closing down Fifth Avenue.

Some chanted “No racist police, no justice, no peace” as rain fell in New York.

“I’m feeling very haunted, very sad,” said Lorena Ambrosio, 27, a Peruvian American and freelance artist, “and just angry that black bodies just keep piling and piling up.”

New York police said they arrested about a dozen protesters for shutting down a major city highway.

(Additional reporting by Laila Kearney, Elizabeth Barber and Chris Michaud in New York; Writing by Nick Carey; Editing by Mary Milliken and Ryan Woo)

Paris protesters march under huge police presence

Security check in France during protest

By Ingrid Melander and Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – Thousands of demonstrators marched under massive police presence in Paris on Thursday to demand that President Francois Hollande scrap labor reform plans that have sparked months of protests marked by serious violence.

More than 2,000 police enforced strict security measures around the capital’s Place de la Bastille square to control the march, checking bags and turning away people with helmets or face-masks.

Police said 85 people were arrested as crowds converged on the marching zone.

The Socialist government originally banned the march but, facing a backlash within its own traditional support base, it backed down and allowed it.

But President Francois Hollande said his government would not retreat from labor legislation that will make hiring and firing easier in a contested attempt to tackle an unemployment rate that has been stuck at 10 percent for most of his time in office.

“We will take this bill to the finish line,” Hollande told reporters as thousands of protestors marched in summer heat along a short protest circuit patrolled by more than one riot police officer per meter (yard).

In a months-long stand-off, neither side wanted to cave in and lose face over a reform plan that opinion polls say is opposed by more than two in three French voters.

“A majority of French people say it (that they oppose the reform). The majority of unions say it, and there’s no majority in favor of it in the National Assembly (lower house of parliament),” said Philippe Martinez, leader of the hardline CGT labor union.

The march tested police forces already stretched under a state of emergency imposed since deadly attacks by Islamist militants in November and by fan violence at the Euro 2016 soccer tournament France is hosting.

The protests against a legislative bill that would loosen protection of worker rights pit Hollande’s unpopular government against the CGT, which is also fighting for a place as France’s most powerful union.

Hollande says the reform is key to hauling down double-digit unemployment, something he has promised if he is to run in next year’s presidential election.

CGT leader Martinez accused Prime Minister Manuel Valls of pinning the blame for the escalating disorder on his group. He condemned the rioters but said the government had inflamed passions as unions sought a deal on the labor reforms.

“Every time we try to calm things down the prime minister throws fuel on the flames again.”

Previous protests have been marred by hundreds of mostly masked youths engaging in running battles with police, hurling paving stones, smashing shops and plastering anti-capitalist slogans on buildings. Police have said some CGT members were in involved in the violence.

(Additional reporting by Jean-Baptise Vey and Simon Carraud; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Hundreds arrested in Venezuela after latest bout of unrest

A man shouts during a protest over food shortage and against Venezuela's government in Caracas

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan security forces have arrested at least 400 people after the latest bout of looting and food riots in the crisis-hit OPEC member country, local officials said on Wednesday.

Violence engulfed the eastern Caribbean coastal town of Cumana on Tuesday as looters swarmed over dozens of shops and security forces struggled to maintain control.

There were unconfirmed reports on social media of several deaths in Cumana, the capital of Sucre state, and an opposition legislator from the zone said one man was shot dead.

But regional governor Luis Acuna from the ruling Socialist Party said the reported deaths were unrelated to the looting.

“There were only 400 people arrested and the deaths were not linked to the looting,” he told a local TV station, calling the looters vandals encouraged by right-wing politicians.

“I have no doubt they paid them, this was planned,” Acuna said.

Nelson Moreno, governor of Anzoategui state, which neighbors Sucre, said eight people were also arrested on Tuesday in “irregular” situations, a term that usually refers to looting.

With desperate crowds of people chanting “We want food!,” protests and melees at shops have spread across Venezuela in recent weeks, fueled by severe shortages.

Three people were shot dead in separate incidents last week, with a policeman and a soldier arrested in two cases.

According to a local monitoring group, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, more than 10 incidents of looting are occurring daily across the nation of 30 million people that is suffering a brutal recession and the world’s highest rate of inflation.

Venezuela’s political opposition says President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez are to blame for failed socialist economic policies. The opposition is pursuing a recall referendum this year in an effort to remove him from office.

But Maduro, 53, says his foes are waging an “economic war” against him and seeking to foment a coup. Government officials say there is not enough time this year to organize a referendum.

Should there be such a vote in 2017 and Maduro loses, his vice president would take over – rather than a new presidential election being held – meaning the ruling “Chavismo” movement would still be in power.

(Reporting by Diego Ore, writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Sarah Dagher; editing by G Crosse)

Rubbish piles up in Paris as pre-euro soccer protests go on

Rubbish piled up on streets in parts of Paris and other French cities on Wednesday as strikes and pickets by waste treatment workers

By Brian Love and Lucien Libert

PARIS (Reuters) – Rubbish piled up on streets in parts of Paris and other French cities on Wednesday as strikes and pickets by waste treatment workers took a toll in the country which hosts the Euro 2016 soccer tournament from Friday.

The protests were part of a wave of demonstrations and work stoppages led by the hardline CGT union against government plans to reform labor law to make hiring and firing easier and help lower the jobless rate from 10 percent.

Police removed blockades at some of the major incineration and rubbish collection depots around the capital but to little effect because workers inside the premises subsequently walked off work, the CGT said.

Despite signs that broader strike action is running out of steam, train services were disrupted for the eighth day running.

The SNCF state railway company said less than 10 percent of workers were on strike, considerably fewer than last week, with three out of four high-speed TGV trains running and six out of 10 slower inter-city connections.

Working to defuse the conflict, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament the state could take over all or part of an SNCF debt of 50 billion euros ($57 billion), possibly hiving it off into a sinking fund to be paid down gradually.

The CGT was holding workplace meetings to decide whether to call off the rail strike.

As millions of foreign visitors and soccer fans prepared for the month-long tournament that kicks off on Friday evening, CGT activists also disrupted a pre-championship publicity event at Paris’s Gare du Nord train station.

About 200 protesters mobbed the station as a locomotive carrying the Euro soccer trophy arrived, a Reuters reporter at the scene said. Riot police protected the trophy.

Separately, the minister in charge of drafting the contested labor law, Myriam El Khomri, condemned a dawn protest outside her Paris home in which she said about 30 demonstrators yelled hostile statements through a megaphone.

Valls has refused to scrap the labor reform but, on top of the debt pledge, has agreed to protect existing rest and shift time quotas for workers in SNCF reorganization talks.

Pilots at Air France are also planning to strike over pay curbs from June 11 to 14.

“The (rail) strike is incomprehensible and the one planned by pilots is every bit as incomprehensible when France is about to start the Euros,” Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said.

(Additional reporting by Lucien Libert and Emmanuel Jarry; Editing by Paul Taylor)

Protesters throw rocks, bottles at police outside Trump rally

A protester disrupts a rally with Trump and his supporters in Albuquerque

By Brendan O’Brien

(Reuters) – Protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers who responded with pepper spray outside a rally for presidential candidate Donald Trump in Albuquerque, New Mexico, police said.

Hundreds of protesters tried to storm the convention center in New Mexico’s biggest city, knocking down barricades and throwing objects at a door and then hurling rocks and bottles at mounted police in riot gear, the Albuquerque Police Department said on Twitter on Tuesday and video posted online showed.

Several police officers were injured, the police tweeted.

Protesters chanted anti-Trump slogans, held anti-Trump signs and waved Mexican flags before the demonstration descended into chaos with some protesters standing on top of police cars.

Television footage showed officers responding by using pepper spray and smoke bombs to disperse the crowd.

Police said they made arrests both outside and inside the rally, where protesters continually interrupted Trump’s speech.

No one at the police department was immediately available for comment.

Protests have become common outside rallies for Trump, the party’s presumptive nominee, who has polarized opinion with his rhetoric against illegal immigration. He abandoned a rally in Chicago in March after clashes between his supporters and protesters.

He has accused Mexico of sending drug dealers and rapists across the U.S. border and has promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

According to CNN, his supporters chanted “build that wall” during his rally on Tuesday in Albuquerque where a little less than half of the population is Hispanic or Latino.

“Watching thugs (and) punks in Albuquerque – en route to California. They don’t even know what they are protesting,” Trump aide Dan Scavino said on Twitter.

Trump heads on Wednesday to a rally in Anaheim, California, which has a growing Latino minority.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

France hit by rail strike, demo by weary police

A police car burns during a demonstration against police violence and against French labour law reform in Paris

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – Strikes by French railway and port workers halved train services and prompted cancellation of ferry links to Britain on Wednesday as labor unions sought to force President Francois Hollande’s government into retreat on labor law reforms.

After weeks of protests in which hundreds of their number have been hurt, police held a rally of their own to vent frustration over the stresses of near daily clashes with violent youths on the fringes of the anti-reform movement.

As they did so, a crowd chanting “police everywhere, justice nowhere” surrounded a police patrol car, which went up in flames after the police officers inside fled the scene, a few hundred meters from where their colleagues were rallying.

The public prosecutor’s office said after the incident it was opening an inquiry into attempted homicide.

Wednesday’s rail strikes, set to run until Friday morning, reduced high-speed and inter-city services by 40 to 50 percent, also heavily disrupting local and suburban commuter lines, the SNCF state railway company said.

Strike turnout, the SNCF said, was about 15 percent, lower than in previous stoppages.

Brittany Ferries announced mass cancellations of connections between Britain and northern France, where port workers joined the industrial action.

Truckers maintained blockades set up on Tuesday in a bid to strangle deliveries in and out of fuel and food distribution depots.

At issue is one of Hollande’s flagship reforms a year from a presidential election – law changes designed to make it easier for employers to hire and fire staff and to opt out of cumbersome national rules in favor of in-house accords on pay.

Hollande says the change will encourage firms to recruit and combat an unemployment rate that has remained above 10 percent.

The 61-year-old leader has said he will not consider running for re-election if he fails to make inroads against joblessness. Critics say the reform will totally undermine the standards of protection enshrined for decades in national labor law.

“ANTI-COP HATRED”

The plan, which pollsters say is opposed by three in four French people, has provoked weeks of often violent protests.

It has also increased pressure on police who were already stretched by extra duties following last November’s deadly militant Islamist attacks on France and are also gearing up for the Euro 2016 soccer tournament that kicks off on June 10.

Condemning what it described as mounting “anti-cop hatred”, the Alliance police union called for Wednesday’s rally in the Place de la Republique, a central Paris square that has seen regular skirmishes in past weeks between riot police and youths hurling petrol bombs and paving stones.

Paris police chief Michel Cadot banned a counter-protest by a group that accuses the police of brutality.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve defended the police and said 350 of them had been injured in standoffs that had produced 1,300 arrests in just two months.

Further strikes and protests are planned for the rest of the week in what labor unions, along with a youth protest movement called Nuit Debout or Night Rising, hope will prove a big enough show of force to make Hollande reconsider.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; Editing by Andrew Callus and Gareth Jones)

France’s government faces nationwide protests over labor reform

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s government faced nationwide protests and a no confidence vote in parliament on Thursday after opting to bypass widespread opposition and impose labor reforms that will make hiring and firing easier.

As crowds gathered in cities across France for another day of demonstrations, the CGT labor union called for weekly rolling strikes at the SNCF state rail company from Tuesday night until Friday morning.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ Socialist administration was expected to survive the confidence vote.

But a series of strikes and waves of street protests that have shown no sign of easing since they began in late March suggest popular discontent over a reform that pollsters say three out of four people oppose is becoming more entrenched.

“It’s time to move up a gear,” Philippe Martinez, head of the CGT union, said. The main objection to the reform from unions is that it would allow firms to adopt in-house terms on pay and conditions instead of complying with national standards.

The official reason for the rail strike call is a standoff with management over conditions, but its timetable dovetails with the broader protests against government policy.

As crowds gathered in cities across France, government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said there was no question of withdrawing the reform.

But it has left an already deeply unpopular President Francois Hollande, who narrowly survived a rebellion by dissenters in his own party on Wednesday, in an uncomfortable position a year from elections.

The reform is also under fire from a rolling youth protest movement known as Nuit Debout, or ‘Night Uprising’.

Since the protests began, several hundred police have been injured in clashes, often with hooded youths hurling stones and petrol bombs. On Thursday, news television channels showed footage of secondary-school pupils blocking schools entrances with garbage bins.

The interior ministry advised motorists to stay away from central Paris ahead of an afternoon march and also reported traffic halted by road blockages in some places.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, a prominent Socialist, added her voice to the dissenters, declaring on Europe 1 radio: “This law does just nothing for social justice.”

Hollande has several other problems piling up.

Media speculation is rife that his youthful economy minister Emmanuel Macron could run for president in the election scheduled for May 2017.

His government has also been caught up in a controversy over sexual harassment in the corridors of power.

After the resignation a politician accused of harassing female colleagues, Finance Minister Michel Sapin, a close Hollande ally, on Wednesday admitted behaving inappropriately toward a female journalist.

(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Andrew Callus and John Stonestreet)

French Police clash with more protesters over labor laws

Masked youths face off with French police during a demonstration against the French labour law proposal in Paris

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – French police clashed with protesters outside a school building in Paris on Wednesday in fresh unrest involving police amid anger over government plans to reform highly-protective labor laws.

Police used teargas to disperse a crowd that tried to stop them removing nearly 300 immigrants who had moved into an empty secondary school that was due to reopen after renovation, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said.

“The state is obliged to apply the law,” Cadot said. The migrants from countries including Sudan and Eritrea had been removed peacefully after police broke through a ring of 200 to 250 protesters, he said.

Four police were slightly hurt, a statement said.

Hundreds of police officers have been reported injured in the past weeks in clashes with demonstrators during street marches across France the country – most of them rallies in protest over a bill that would make it easier in some cases to fire employees.

On Tuesday seven riot police officers were hurt in clashes with masked youths in the Western city of Nantes.

“This is totally unacceptable, with 300 police hurt since the start of the year,” said government spokesman Stephane Le Foll. “We will not let this pass.”

The primary focus of protest is the planned reform of some of the most extensive and protective labor rules in Europe.

An Elabe opinion poll released on Wednesday showed that three out of four French people oppose a bill that the government argues will remove red tape and encourage employers to recruit in a country where the jobless rate is above 10 percent.

Critics fear the bill will undermine employers’ obligations under the current national labor code.

Police chief Cadot is also seeking to tighten the noose on a rolling youth protest movement – called Nuit Debout – that has been organizing late-night sit-ins at the large Place de la Republique square in central Paris.

After repeated clashes where youths hurled petrol bombs and paving stones at police, he has banned alcohol consumption and late night music on the square and told Nuit Debout activists to quit the area every day before midnight.

(Reporting by Brian Love; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Paris police arrest 27 after overnight violence

French labour union workers and students attend a demonstration against the French labour law proposal in Paris

By Brian Love and Simon Carraud

PARIS (Reuters) – French riot police arrested 27 people during overnight clashes with dozens of youths in central Paris, following a day of protest marches over labor law reforms that turned violent.

Some opposition lawmakers and police union representatives urged a government crackdown on demonstrations and said it was time for an outright ban on the daily, mostly peaceful, youth protests at the site of Thursday night’s skirmishes.

The latest trouble erupted when police moved in to clear a group of about 150 youths from the Place de la Republique square in the early hours of the morning. Cars were set ablaze and lumps of concrete and cobblestones hurled at officers. Twenty-four of the 27 arrested were held in custody, police said.

“These are largely people coming looking for a fight,” Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.

The unrest comes at a time police forces and soldiers are working overtime to ensure security in the wake of last November’s deadly militant attacks on the capital.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets country-wide on Thursday to protest against labor law reforms aimed at making hiring and firing easier. Violent clashes broke out on the fringes of demonstrations in several cities.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 214 arrests were made in all. Seventy-eight police were injured, with one in a serious condition after a skull-cracking blow from a paving block.

Paris police prefect Michel Cadot has said organized groups were behind the protest violence, which has mushroomed despite the state of emergency imposed after November’s attacks.

Some police union representatives have called on police chiefs to issue fewer protest permits.

Nicolas Comte of the police union SGP police-FO said it was time to ban the Place de la Republique protest known as “Nuit Debout” – which roughly translates as “Up all night” – arguing gangs of hardcore troublemakers were hijacking the movement.

The French government has condemned the violence but, with just a year to national elections, has appeared keen to avoid the curfews it has the power to impose under the state of emergency.

Cazeneuve said almost 1,000 people had been arrested since protests started in March and dismissed calls for an all-out crackdown.

“State authority does not mean you abandon the rule of law,” the minister said.

(Additional reporting by Simon Carraud; Editing by Andrew Callus and Richard Lough)