Tag Archives: Riots

French police clash with youths at protest rally, arrest eight

Clouds of tear gas surround youths as they face off with French police during a demonstration against police brutality after a young black man, 22-year-old youth worker named Theo, was severely injured during his arrest earlier this month, in Paris, France, February 23, 2017. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

PARIS (Reuters) – Hundreds of French high-school students staged an unauthorized anti-police rally on Thursday, blocking the entrances to a dozen schools in Paris in the latest in a series of protests over the alleged rape of a young black man with a police baton.

Police reported eight arrests after isolated skirmishes with youths who hurled objects and damaged property on the fringes of what otherwise appeared to have been a relatively peaceful demonstration.

The protest comes two months before a presidential election where far-right leader Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant National Front party, is tipped to win the first round but lose the runoff vote that takes place on May 7.

The Paris school authority said more than 10 schools had been targeted by youths who piled up rubbish bins and other objects at the entrance gates. In one case, a deputy school director was injured when protesters hurled a fire extinguisher.

The protesters are angry over the alleged rape of the 22-year-old man during a Feb. 2 arrest in an area north of Paris where large numbers of immigrants live. The man, identified only as Theo, remains in hospital with injuries to his anus and head.

He has called for public calm and his family has said they have faith in the French justice system.

One of the banners carried at Thursday’s rally read “Revenge for Theo!”

Social media networks showed signs of skirmishes on the fringes of the rally in the Place de la Nation square in the east of Paris, where riot police in protective gear advanced on groups of mostly-hooded youths in sidestreet confrontations.

A helicopter flew overhead and tear gas clouds rose into the air above that square toward the end of the rally.

The Paris police department had warned people to stay away from the protest, saying it was not authorized and that there was a risk of violent groups causing trouble, as happened over the last three weeks.

Four police officers have been suspended pending an inquiry into the Feb. 2 incident. One has been placed under formal investigation for suspected rape and three others for unnecessary use of force.

So far the protests have not snowballed to the extent of the unrest that 12 years ago drew global attention to the stark contrast between wealthy Paris and the suburbs that surround it.

(Writing by Brian Love; additional reporting by Gerard Bon and Jean-Baptiste Vey; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Protesters take to streets for a second day to decry Trump election

Protesters of Trump as President

By Gina Cherelus and Ian Simpson

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Police put up security fences around U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s new Washington hotel on Thursday and a line of concrete blocks shielded New York’s Trump Tower as students around the country staged a second day of protests over his election.

A day after thousands of people took to the streets in at least 10 U.S. cities from Boston to Berkeley, California, chanting “not my president” and “no Trump,” fresh protests were held in Texas to San Francisco.

A Trump campaign representative did not respond to requests for comment on the protests but Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and a high-profile Trump supporter, called the demonstrators “a bunch of spoiled cry-babies.”

“If you’re looking at the real left-wing loonies on the campus, it’s the professors not the students,” Giuliani said on Fox News on Thursday. “Calm down, things are not as bad as you think.”

The protesters blasted Trump for campaign rhetoric critical of immigrants, Muslims and allegations of sexual abuse of women. More than 20 people were arrested for blocking or attempting to block highways in Los Angeles and Richmond, Virginia, early Thursday morning.

White House spokesman Joshua Earnest said Obama supported the demonstrators’ right to express themselves peacefully.

“We’ve got a carefully, constitutionally protected right to free speech,” Earnest told reporters. “The president believes that that is a right that should be protected. It is a right that should be exercised without violence.”

In San Francisco, more than 1,000 students walked out of classes on Thursday morning and marched through the city’s financial district carrying rainbow flags representing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, Mexican flags and signs decrying the president-elect.

Several hundred students at Texas State University in San Marcos took to the campus to protest Trump’s election, with many students saying they fear he will infringe the civil rights of minorities and the LGBT community.

“NOT MY PRESIDENT”

In New York’s Washington Square park, several hundred people gathered to protest Trump’s election. Three miles (5 km) to the north at the gilt Trump Tower, where Trump lives, 29-year-old Alex Conway stood holding a sign that read “not my president.”

“This sign is not to say he isn’t the president of the United States, but for two days I can use my emotion to be against this outcome and to express that he’s not mine,” said Conway, who works in the film industry. “The only thing I can hope for is that in four years I’m proved wrong.”

In Washington, a jogger shouted an expletive about Trump as he passed the Trump International Hotel on Thursday, just blocks from the White House, where the former reality TV star had his first meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss transition plans.

More anti-Trump demonstrations are planned heading into the weekend, according to organizers’ online posts. One urged protesters to rally in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.

Supporters of Trump, who surprised many in the political and media establishment with Tuesday’s win, urged calm and recommended that Americans wait to see how he performed as president.

The United States has seen waves of large-scale, sometimes violent protests in the past few years. Cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to Berkeley have been rocked by demonstrations following high-profile police killings of unarmed black men and teens. Those followed a wave of large-scale protest encampments, starting with the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York in 2011.

Trump said in his victory speech, which was delivered in a far calmer manner than he displayed in many campaign appearances, that he would be president for all Americans. Some of his most controversial campaign proposals, including the call to ban Muslims from entering the United States, had been removed from his campaign website by Thursday.

A spate of isolated attacks on women and members of minority groups by people wearing Trump hats or saying his name were reported by police and U.S. media.

A hijab-wearing female student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was assaulted on Wednesday morning by a man wearing a white “Trump” hat, who knocked her to the ground and took her head scarf and wallet, university police said in a statement.

Reports also showed other cases in which Trump opponents lashed out violently against people carrying signs indicating they supported him.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Ian Simpson in Washington, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Trott)

Calls for calm, curfew bring quieter night after Milwaukee riots

Police and community members stand in a park after disturbances following the police shooting of a man in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

By Brendan O’Brien

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Calls for calm, curfew bring quieter night after Milwaukee riots sparked by the fatal shooting of a black man by a black police officer.

Sylville Smith, 23, was killed on Saturday afternoon after he was stopped for acting suspiciously and then fled. Authorities said he was carrying an illegal handgun and refused orders to drop it when he was shot.

Peaceful demonstrations in the Sherman Park area where Smith died turned into violent protests on Saturday and Sunday nights. Shots were fired, and some rioters torched businesses and police cars. Angry crowds pelted riot police with bottles and bricks.

Eight officers were wounded, and dozens of people were arrested, police said. One person suffered a gunshot wound.

But Monday night was much quieter after a citywide curfew for teenagers took effect at 10 p.m. (0300 GMT). Police said there were six arrests and no reports of major property damage.

“We think we are in, comparatively speaking, a positive place,” Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn told reporters as it became apparent the curfew was being respected. “We had folks from the community step forward to take a leadership role in reducing tensions.”

Milwaukee has become the latest U.S. city to be gripped by unrest after high-profile police killings of black men over the past two years. Many of the officers involved in the earlier shootings were white, however, and the victims were unarmed.

The city will become a focus of the U.S. presidential race later on Tuesday. Republican nominee Donald Trump plans to visit and film a town hall meeting with Fox News host Sean Hannity, raising the possibility of protests similar to those that have taken place outside some of the candidate’s campaign events elsewhere.

Famed for its breweries, Milwaukee is one of the most racially divided U.S. cities, with a black population plagued with high levels of unemployment that are absent in the mostly white suburbs.

Mayor Tom Barrett said on Monday that nightly curfews on teenagers would remain in place “for as long as necessary”.

Barrett has urged state officials to release a video of Smith’s shooting as soon as possible in hopes that, by corroborating the police department’s account, it would convince protesters that the use of deadly force was justified.

Barrett said he had not seen the video. Wisconsin state law requires police shootings be investigated by an independent state agency, which controls such evidence.

Flynn said on Sunday that the body camera video showed Smith was holding a gun and had turned toward the officer, and appeared to show that the officer acted within the law.

Because the audio from the video was delayed, the police chief said, it was unclear when the officer fired his weapon.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Curtis Skinner; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

One person shot, officer injured in second night of Milwaukee protests

A gas station is seen burned down after disturbances following the police shooting of a man in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.

By Brendan O’Brien

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Tension flared again overnight in Milwaukee, with one person shot and a police officer injured in the second night of riots triggered by the fatal shooting of a suspect by an officer.

Police violence against African-Americans has ignited sporadic, sometimes violent protests in the past two years. It also has prompted a national debate over race and policing while fuelling the growth of the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement.

Violence erupted in Milwaukee on Sunday after peaceful vigils by small groups of demonstrators, and police said late that night that they had rescued one shooting victim, who was taken to a hospital. It was not immediately clear if the injured person was a protester.

One police officer was hospitalized after a rock smashed a patrol car windshield, the city police department said. Another squad car was damaged by rioters hurling bricks, rocks and bottles, it said, adding that officers made multiple arrests.

Police said they began trying to disperse crowds after shots were fired and some protesters threw objects. A tense standoff continued into the early morning hours, punctuated by intermittent reports of gunfire.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker had activated the National Guard in case more trouble broke over the death of Sylville K. Smith, 23, who was shot while fleeing a traffic stop.

Despite the violence, police said the National Guard had not been called in, as authorities worked to restore order.

“WITHIN LAWFUL BOUNDS”

Aiming to reassure the community that the police acted properly, Chief Edward Flynn told a news conference on Sunday that video from the officer’s body camera showed Smith had turned toward him with a gun in his hand.

Earlier on Sunday evening, about 200 people had gathered to light candles near the spot where Smith was killed in the Sherman Park neighborhood. A few officers looked on as faith and community leaders implored protesters to restrain their anger.

“We are not ignorant and stupid people,” one pastor told the crowd, echoing a feeling among many of the city’s African-Americans that they are systematically mistreated.

“Every single person needs to be looked upon as human beings and not like savages and animals.”

On Saturday night, shots were fired, six businesses were burned and police cars damaged before calm was restored in the area, which has a reputation for poverty and crime. Seventeen people were arrested, and four officers were injured.

At the news conference with Mayor Tom Barrett, Flynn said the officer who fired the fatal shot was black, and media reports also identified Smith as black.

He said a silent video of the incident appeared to show the officer acting within the law. The officer had stopped Smith’s vehicle because the driver was behaving suspiciously and then had to chase him on foot into an enclosed space between two houses, Flynn said.

Because the audio was delayed, he said, it was not clear when the officer fired his weapon.

“I’m looking at a silent movie that doesn’t necessarily tell me everything that will come out in a thorough investigation,” Flynn said.

“Based on what I saw, didn’t hear, don’t know what the autopsy results are going to be, (the officer) certainly appeared to be within lawful bounds.”

Barrett said Smith did not drop the gun as ordered before he was shot.

The mayor said Smith had a lengthy arrest record, and officials had earlier said he was carrying a stolen handgun loaded with 23 rounds of ammunition when stopped.

“SHOT IN HIS BACK”

On Sunday evening, several of Smith’s sisters addressed the crowd, saying their brother did not deserve to be shot.

“My brother was no felon,” said one of them, Kimberly Neal, 24, as she wept. “My brother was running for his life. He was shot in his back.”

Walker announced the National Guard activation after a request from Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. But Barrett said any decision to deploy the troops would come from the police chief.

The National Guard, which is under the dual control of the federal and state governments, was deployed in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014 after several nights of rioting over the police killing of an unarmed black man.

This summer has brought deadly ambushes of police. Five officers were slain by a sniper in Dallas last month as they guarded an otherwise peaceful protest against police killings. A gunman killed three officers in Baton Rouge less than two weeks later.

Policing in Milwaukee has come under scrutiny since 2014, when a white officer killed Dontre Hamilton, a mentally ill, unarmed black man, in an incident that sparked largely peaceful protests.

(Additional reporting by Chris Michaud and Laila Kearney and Daniel Wallis in New York and Julia Harte in Washington; Writing by Chris Michaud; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

In U.S. cities hit by killings, shared concerns over cops tactics, race

Law officers march down a street during protests in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

By Tom Polansek

(Reuters) – Nekima Levy-Pounds, president of the Minneapolis chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, compares the city’s mostly white police department to “an occupying force” when its officers go into black neighborhoods.

In Baton Rouge, minorities are “very wary of police and often afraid of them,” says Michele Fournet, a veteran criminal defense lawyer there.

Long before they were rocked this month by local police killings of black men, the two U.S. cities were grappling with similar problems – police forces viewed by many as overly aggressive and unrepresentative of black communities.

Activists and residents in both places have urged law enforcement to spend more time in neighborhoods building relationships and trust as part of “community policing” efforts. Many would also like the cities to hire more black officers.

Such calls having been growing across the country since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, a black teenager, by a white officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. Since then, a wave of anti-police protests has spread across the country fueled by high-profile police killings of other black men, including Baltimore police detainee Freddie Gray last year.

“Whether it’s Baton Rouge or Ferguson or Baltimore or Minnesota, we need more community policing,” said Cleve Dunn Jr., a black business man and political consultant in Baton Rouge.

(Racial make-up of Baton Rouge, Minneapolis police: http://tmsnrt.rs/29Bf9We)

Police spokesmen from Baton Rouge and Minneapolis, in statements, said their departments had each made significant strides toward diversity in their forces.

The Minneapolis Police Department said it has been “a national leader and has set national ‘best practice’ standards in community engagement and community policing.”

Officials from St. Anthony, Minn., which provides police service to Falcon Heights and employs the officer who shot Castile, did not respond to questions.

Alton Sterling, the Baton Rouge man who was shot by police on July 5, had peddled CDs for years and law enforcement officers would have known he was not a threat if they were more familiar with the area, local residents said.

One officer is notorious for harassing local black residents, to the point where he has been given a street nickname of “Bro Stupid,” said Burnell Williams, who works with at-risk youth and ex-prisoners for the nonprofit group Against All Odds.

Blacks made up about 55 percent of Baton Rouge’s population in 2010, but only 30 percent of the police force in 2013, according to U.S. government data.

Similar disparities affect Minneapolis, near the tiny city of Falcon Heights where Philando Castile was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop on July 6.

STAFFING PROBLEMS

Blacks in Minneapolis were 8.7 times more likely than whites to be arrested for low-level offenses, such as trespassing and disorderly conduct, according to a study of arrests from 2012 to 2014 that the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota published last year.

Blacks accounted for about 19 percent of Minneapolis’ population in 2010 but just about 9 percent of the city’s police officers in 2013, according to U.S. data.

Black residents of Minneapolis and nearby towns said the lack of a requirement for police to live in the jurisdictions they patrol has kept officers disconnected from neighborhoods. Some U.S. cities have instituted residency requirements for police.

“You have mostly white officers patrolling a poor black neighborhood where they have no real nexus to the community, where there are high rates of complaints against the use of excessive force by police and the over-criminalization of the African American community,” Levy-Pounds said.

Some Minneapolis police and residents said staffing shortages limited officers’ ability to do more community policing.

Bob Kroll, president of the city’s police union, said the department needs to increase its numbers by about 20 percent. Without more officers, “you’re just going call to call to call, 9-1-1,” he said.

Ronald Edwards, a black civil rights activist in Minneapolis who contacted Reuters at the request of the police department, said he believed the city’s police chief was doing her best to improve race relations.

However, he said “you don’t have enough officers to deploy them and do the things that really begin to break down the barriers between people of different colors.”

In Dallas, where five police officers were murdered in the wake of the shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, police Chief David Brown told reporters on July 11 that community policing was the best way to deter crime and protect officers.

Brown, a 33-year department veteran, noted that 2015 was the 12th year of crime reduction in Dallas, more than any other major American city.

Police “have done this by also protecting the civil rights of our citizens,” Brown said of the decline.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley, Ernest Scheyder, Letitia Stein, Nick Carey and Tom Polansek; editing by Stuart Grudgings)

Turkish coup bid crumbles as crowds answer call to streets, Erdogan returns

People demonstrate in front of the Republic Monument at the Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, July 16,

By Nick Tattersall and Ece Toksabay

ISTANBUL/ANKARA (Reuters) – An attempted Turkish military coup appeared to crumble in the early hours of Saturday after crowds answered President Tayyip Erdogan’s call to take to the streets to support him.

Erdogan, who had been holidaying on the coast when the coup was launched, flew into Istanbul before dawn on Saturday and was shown on TV appearing among a crowd of supporters outside the airport, which the coup plotters had failed to secure.

The uprising was an “act of treason”, and those responsible would pay a heavy price, he later told reporters at a hastily arranged news conference. Arrests of officers were under way, and it would go higher up the ranks, culminating in the cleansing of the military.

Gunfire and explosions had rocked both the main city Istanbul and capital Ankara in a chaotic night after soldiers took up positions in both cities and ordered state television to read out a statement declaring they had taken power.

But by early Saturday, Reuters journalists saw around 30  pro-coup soldiers surrender their weapons after being surrounded by armed police in Istanbul’s central Taksim square.

They were taken away in police vans as a fighter jet repeatedly screeched overhead at low altitude, causing a boom that shook surrounding buildings and shattered windows.

A successful overthrow of Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey since 2003, would have marked one of the biggest shifts in the Middle East in years, transforming one of the most important U.S. allies while war rages on its border. A failed coup attempt could still destabilize a pivotal country.

Before returning to Istanbul, Erdogan appeared in a video call to the studio of the Turkish sister channel of CNN, where an announcer held up a mobile phone to the camera to show him. He called on Turks to take to the streets to defend his government and said the coup plotters would pay a heavy price.

By the early hours of Saturday morning, lawmakers were still hiding in shelters inside the parliament building in Ankara, which had been fired on by tanks. Smoke rose up from nearby, Reuters witnesses said. An opposition MP told Reuters parliament was hit three times and that people had been wounded.

A Turkish military commander said fighter jets had shot down a helicopter used by the coup plotters over Ankara. State-run Anadolu news agency said 17 police were killed at special forces headquarters there.

As the night wore on, momentum turned against the coup plotters. Crowds defied orders to stay indoors, gathering at major squares in Istanbul and Ankara, waving flags and chanting.

“We have a prime minister, we have a chief of command, we’re not going to leave this country to degenerates,” shouted one man, as groups of government supporters climbed onto a tank near Istanbul’s Ataturk airport.

Erdogan and other officials blamed loyalists of a U.S.-based cleric for the coup attempt; his movement denied any part in it.

U.S. SUPPORT

The United States declared its firm backing for Erdogan’s government. Secretary of State John Kerry said he phoned the Turkish foreign minister and emphasized “absolute support for Turkey’s democratically elected, civilian government and democratic institutions”.

The coup began with warplanes and helicopters roaring over Ankara and troops moving in to seal off the bridges over the Bosphorus that link Europe and Asia in Istanbul.

Reuters reporters saw a helicopter open fire in Ankara. Anadolu said military helicopters had fired on the headquarters of the intelligence agency.

In the first hours of the coup attempt, airports were shut and access to internet social media sites was cut off.

Soldiers took control of TRT state television, which announced a countrywide curfew and martial law. An announcer read a statement on the orders of the military that accused the government of eroding the democratic and secular rule of law. The country would be run by a “peace council” that would ensure the safety of the population, the statement said.

Shortly afterwards, TRT went off the air. It resumed broadcasting in the early hours of Saturday.

Anadolu said the chief of Turkey’s military staff was among people taken “hostage” in the capital Ankara, but Prime Minister Binali Yildirim later said he was back in control.

“NOT A TINPOT COUP”

Early in the evening the coup appeared strong. A senior EU source monitoring the situation said: “It looks like a relatively well orchestrated coup by a significant body of the military, not just a few colonels. They’ve got control of the airports and are expecting control over the TV station imminently. They control several strategic points in Istanbul.

“Given the scale of the operation, it is difficult to imagine they will stop short of prevailing.”

One European diplomat was dining with the Turkish ambassador to a European capital when guests were interrupted by the pinging of urgent news on their mobile phones.

“This is clearly not some tinpot little coup. The Turkish ambassador was clearly shocked and is taking it very seriously,” the diplomat told Reuters as the dinner party broke up. “However it looks in the morning, this will have massive implications for Turkey. This has not come out of nowhere.”

Turkey, a NATO member with the second biggest military in the Western alliance, is one of the most important allies of the United States in the fight against Islamic State, which seized swathes of neighboring Iraq and Syria.

The Pentagon said there was no impact on operations against Islamic State from the U.S. air base at Incirlik in Turkey.

Turkey is also one of the main backers of opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in that country’s civil war, host to 2.7 million Syrian refugees and launchpad last year for the biggest influx of migrants to Europe since World War Two.

Celebratory gunfire erupted in Syria’s capital Damascus after the army claimed to have toppled Erdogan. People took the streets to celebrate there and in other government-held cities.

Turkey has been at war with Kurdish separatists, and has suffered numerous bombing and shooting attacks this year, including an attack two weeks ago by Islamists at Istanbul’s main airport that killed more than 40 people.

Turkish officials blamed the attempted coup on followers of Fethullah Gulen, an influential cleric in self-imposed exile in the United States who once supported Erdogan but became a nemesis. The pro-Gulen Alliance for Shared Values said it condemned any military intervention in domestic politics.

After serving as prime minister from 2003, Erdogan was elected president in 2014 with plans to alter the constitution to give the previously ceremonial presidency far greater executive powers.

Turkey has enjoyed an economic boom during his time in office and has dramatically expanded its influence across the region. But opponents say his rule has become increasingly authoritarian.

His AK Party, with roots in Islamism, has long had a strained relationship with the military and nationalists in a state that was founded on secularist principles after World War One. The military has a history of mounting coups to defend secularism, but has not seized power directly since 1980.

Prime Minister Yildirim said a group within Turkey’s military had attempted to overthrow the government and security forces have been called in to “do what is necessary”.

“Some people illegally undertook an illegal action outside of the chain of command,” Yildirim said in comments broadcast by private channel NTV.

“The government elected by the people remains in charge. This government will only go when the people say so.”

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Ayla Jean Yackley, Nick Tattersall, David Dolan, Akin Aytekin, Tulay Karadeniz, Can Sezer, Gulsen Solaker, Ece Toksabay, Murad Sezer, Ercan Gurses, Nevzat Devranoglu, Dasha Afanasieva, Birsen Altayli and Orhan Coskun; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Catherine Evans and Mary Milliken)

FBI,Homeland Security chief preparing for violence at political conventions

U.S. security chiefs testify before a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington

By Julia Edwards

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers on Thursday that they were preparing their agencies for the possibility of violence, both from unruly demonstrators and terrorists, at the upcoming Republican and Democratic nominating conventions.

Speaking before the House Homeland Security Committee, Johnson said he was concerned that demonstrations at the events could get out of hand.

In an interview with Reuters following his testimony, Johnson said he knew of no specific or credible threat to either convention but that it was important to be prepared.

Johnson said the Department of Homeland Security would be sending more than 3,000 personnel to each convention.

Recent clashes between attendees and protesters at rallies for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have led to physical assaults and arrests.

The Republican National Convention being held July 18-21 in Cleveland and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia from July 25-28 follow a string of high-profile shootings.

In June, an Islamic State sympathizer committed the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, killing 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Last week, five police officers in Dallas were killed by a black man angry about police shootings of unarmed black men.

Comey told the committee that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was monitoring the threat of violence at the conventions “very, very carefully.”

“Anytime there is a national spotlight on a political event in the United States, there is a risk that groups that aspire to do just that, engage in acts of domestic terrorism, will be attracted,” Comey said.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Cleveland police keeping low profile for Republican convention

An anti-Trump protester holds his protest sign in front of mounted police outside a rally for Republican U.S. presidential candidate

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – As dozens of Black Lives Matter protesters chanted: “No justice, no peace!” in central Cleveland on Monday, they faced down a wall of police – on bicycles, dressed in polo shirts and shorts.

It was the kind of police presence the organizers of next week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland have long had in mind – respectful of free speech, and orderly. No arrests were made.

Elsewhere in the United States, tensions are high since last week’s deadly attack on police in Dallas, creating scenes like the one in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where police in riot gear confronted a woman standing calmly in a flowing dress, an image captured in a photograph that has attracted worldwide attention.

But in Cleveland, where the four-day Republican convention begins on Monday, police are committed to a low profile, avoiding the militarized presence that has become common in recent years since police across the country received free war surplus equipment from the Pentagon.

The Ohio city is sticking with its plan even after the events in Dallas, where a black U.S. veteran of the Afghan war, who had said he wanted to “kill white people,” fatally shot five police officers on Thursday.

The attack came during an otherwise peaceful protest to denounce last week’s police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Protests have continued in those states, resulting in hundreds of arrests. Cleveland police have said they will increase intelligence and surveillance as a result of the Dallas attacks.

“(Dallas) affects our planning, but we have planned, we have what-iffed and we have table-topped this for a long time,” the police chief, Calvin Williams, told a news conference on Tuesday. “We don’t want anybody to trample on anybody else’s rights.”

Steve Loomis, the head of the Cleveland police officers’ union, said Cleveland may be too lightly equipped. He also complained about a 28-page General Police Order sent to officers a month before the convention, with instructions on de-escalating conflicts and preserving protesters’ rights, calling it condescending and designed to make officers look weak.

“We have no shields because they think it is too offensive,” Loomis said. “But a brick to the head is offensive to me.”

TRUMP FACTOR

Political conventions are a magnet for protests even under normal circumstances, and Cleveland will have the Trump factor.

Donald Trump, the New York businessman set to receive the Republican presidential nomination for the Nov. 8 election, has stirred passions among supporters and opponents during the campaign with his comments on illegal immigrants and Muslims, and the two sides have clashed at several of his campaign events.

Cleveland’s gun laws will allow people to carry guns openly within the so-called event zone where demonstrations will take place. The New Black Panther Party, a “black power” movement, will carry firearms for self-defense during demonstrations in Cleveland, the group’s chairman said.

The city comes into the convention with less hardware than other places. Cleveland never received any war surplus but has bought one armored vehicle and personal protective equipment for officers, a police spokeswoman said. Otherwise, Cleveland has avoided “controlled equipment” such as bayonets and grenade launchers, which the Defense Department has since recalled from many police departments.

But the city is also keeping secret millions of dollars worth of police purchases until after the convention, citing security concerns.

‘DE-ESCALATION’

Among the publicly disclosed purchases for the convention to date have been 2,000 new sets of personal protection equipment, colloquially known as riot gear.

The U.S. Secret Service and FBI will run security inside the convention hall, while Cleveland police will handle crowd control outside, aided by 3,000 reinforcements, mostly from elsewhere in Ohio.

Jacqueline Greene, co-coordinator for the National Lawyers Guild, a human rights organization, expressed concern the visiting officers may not share Cleveland’s priorities on protecting free speech.

Cleveland and visiting police will be bound by the General Police Order on managing crowds while protecting free speech and assembly rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The order directs police to “rely on de-escalation and voluntary compliance, and without using force, as the primary means of maintaining order.”

Only the police chief or one of his designated subordinates may approve mass arrests.

“One order is to create space,” Loomis said. “That is retreating. When they (protesters) see we are on our heels, it is a victory for them.”

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Peter Cooney)

After Dallas shooting, U.S. Police forces rethinking tactics

Law officers march down a street during protests in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

By Nick Carey

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Police departments across the United States are searching for new tactics for a more difficult era of racial tension, increasingly lethal mass shootings and global terrorism.

After last week’s killing of five officers in Dallas, the deadliest assault on U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, nearly half of America’s 30 biggest cities have issued directives to pair up police officers on calls to boost safety, according to a Reuters survey of police departments.

And one, Indianapolis, said it would consider the use of robots to deliberately deliver lethal force, an unprecedented tactic until Thursday when the Dallas police department used a military-grade robot to deliver and detonate explosives where the shooter was holed up.

While a wave of anti-police protests since the 2014 killing of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, has revived memories of 1960s protests over civil rights and the Vietnam War, Thursday’s shooting marked something different: a willingness to take up arms against police.

Ambushes against police on Thursday and Friday in Tennessee, Georgia and Missouri added to a sense of being under siege and vulnerable at a time when many departments already were grappling with heightened community suspicion over the use of deadly force.

Responding to the Dallas shooting, Denver’s police union wants officers to wear riot gear for local protests and to be armed with AR-15 assault rifles while patrolling Denver International Airport, the union said in a letter to the mayor published in The Denver Post.

The most immediate change is the pairing up of officers. Thirteen of the country’s 30 biggest city police department said they are pairing up officers – a change that could strain already thinly staffed police ranks in some regions.

(The 13 are New York City, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Seattle, Memphis, Boston and Portland.)

In Albuquerque, New Mexico — one of several cities dealing with an officer shortage — pairing officers could mean “possibly longer response times for lower priority calls,” said its police spokesman, Simon Drobik. And for cities with tight municipal budgets, some question whether this expensive strategy can last beyond the short term.

Doubling up officers “is a resource-intense approach and it will be a significant challenge for some police departments to sustain that strategy for very long,” said Thomas Manger, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), which represents police chiefs from the country’s largest cities.

He predicted over the longer term that police will increase surveillance and expand their security presence at major events across the country. “This will cause complaints about violating people’s constitutional rights to free assembly, but it is the only way to guarantee safety,” he said.

‘TARGETS ON THEIR BACK’

The attack in Dallas came during a demonstration Thursday over the shooting by police of two black men. Alton Sterling, 37, was shot by police in Baton Rouge on Tuesday and Philando Castile, 32, was killed on Wednesday night in a St. Paul, Minnesota suburb.

The Dallas shooting also left seven officers injured.

“We need to figure out a way to ensure that police officers don’t get targeted, because right now they do have targets on their backs,” said Andrea Edmiston, director of governmental affairs for the National Association of Police Organizations, which represents about 241,000 U.S. police officers.

Few of the police forces approached by Reuters said they could discuss specific changes in tactics beyond pairing officers on the beat. Los Angeles and Denver, for instance, declined for safety reasons to discuss tactics.

Indianapolis police spokesman Kendale Adams said his department would consider using a robot to deliver a bomb. “Our team will consider all options in (a) deadly force encounter,” he said in an e-mail.

If every police department had New York City’s resources, the challenges would be much less.

New York police spokesman Stephen Davis said some 1,500 of the city’s 36,000 police officers have received coordinated heavy weapons training.

Davis said there are officers around the clock who can respond to an active shooter situation in an estimated three to five minutes.

“As most active shooter situations last under 10 minutes, that speed is crucial,” he said. “But we are well aware of the luxury that we have with so many resources available to us.”

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement policy group, said that as 90 percent of America’s 18,000 police forces have under 50 officers, many simply cannot afford the kind of staff needed to respond as quickly as needed to mass shootings.

Wexler said the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 had been a milestone for police in realizing that major public events could become targets.

“Police departments will have to deploy additional forces to what have traditionally been low-risk events,” he said, “because those events now have the potential for some extremist or madman to commit violent acts.”

But he said that the best way to reduce deaths from attacks with semi-automatic weapons is to gain the trust of local communities so people will come forward and help prevent attacks. Once an attack starts, there is only so much the police can do.

The MCCA’s Manger said that beyond police strategy and tactics, what America needs is a change of mindset.

“Everyone on both sides needs to take a step back.”

(Additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington; Editing by Jason Szep and Mary Milliken)

Doctors turn militant over Venezuela’s health crisis

Patients lie in hospital beds in the hallway of Venezuelan hospital

By Corina Pons

MERIDA, Venezuela Reuters) – A dozen doctors hold a hunger strike in the corridors of an Andean city hospital. In another provincial city, hundreds of protesting medics suspend appointments.

In the capital, staff from a pediatric hospital wave placards at the entrance to a hospital pleading for aid.

Not usually active in politics, many of the OPEC nation’s 40,000 doctors are becoming increasingly militant over drastic shortages of medicines, equipment and personnel amid a punishing economic crisis.

With eight out of 10 medicines now scarce, according to the main pharmacy group, protesting doctors are demanding that President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government declare a national health crisis and allow foreign humanitarian aid.

“I started to see patients, both in the operating theater and in the emergency ward, dying for lack of medicines,” said David Macineiras, a 30-year-old orthopedic surgeon and one of 12 doctors who went on hunger strike at the main state hospital in the western highland city of Merida.

“They arrive in bad conditions and we can’t even get adrenaline to deal with a cardiac arrest,” he said, describing the case of a woman who died for lack of adrenaline. Macineiras himself was hospitalized for four days after his hunger strike.

The protests involve a small percentage of doctors, in part because medics – especially younger ones – depend on the state to complete their residencies and studies and so have good reason to avoid conflict.

Doctors who hold high-ranking positions in public health acknowledge there are problems, but insist that none are sufficiently severe as to put patient lives at risk.

Christian Pino, a surgeon at the Merida hospital who also joined the strike, insists the opposite is true.

He recently operated on an elderly woman who due to chronic hospital shortages had to bring her own supplies, including saline solution. It ran out before the operation finished.

“In post-op, we didn’t have any serum to hydrate her, so the patient died,” he said at the hospital where stretchers packed corridors and incubators stood abandoned with handwritten signs saying they were out of service.

In June, Pino read a list of doctors’ demands in Venezuela’s National Assembly before the opposition-led legislature declared a state of medical emergency and approved channels for foreign humanitarian aid.

“I prefer to raise my voice with my colleagues than be an accomplice to this,” Pino said.

But the government-leaning Supreme Court shot down the assembly’s proposal. Government officials deny Venezuela is facing a humanitarian crisis and say there is no need for humanitarian assistance.

Maduro is fiercely proud of health advances under the 1999-2013 rule of socialist leader Hugo Chavez, and he says adversaries are exaggerating the problems now.

“There is no humanitarian crisis, I say it with absolute responsibility,” Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez recently told an Organization of American States meeting on Venezuela.

DEPRESSING DATA

Up-to-date data is hard to find, but what little is available points to a severe deterioration.

Health ministry statistics show that in 2015 for every 100 people discharged from state hospitals, 31 died – a rate six times higher than the previous year. Infant mortality was 2 percent of births last year, 100 times worse than 2014.

It is a huge challenge for the ruling Socialist Party which, under Chavez, ran enormously popular free health projects such as Cuban-staffed clinics in the slums but is now finding its welfare programs stretched.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Venezuela and Guyana were the only countries in South America to see maternal death rates worsen last year.

Health Minister Luisana Melo recently recognized health sector problems but said authorities are working to reduce the rates of infant mortality and death during childbirth.

She said shortages only affect around 15 percent of medicines and that Venezuelans tend to consume more medicine than they need to.

The government says a U.S.-backed “economic war” by political opponents and hostile business groups has caused the crisis, exacerbated by a plunge in the price of oil, which accounts for 95 percent of export revenues.

Huge lines snake around most pharmacies from before dawn, with some people staying all night to stake a place. Rowdy scenes are common, and soldiers guard the crowds.

In Merida, orthopedic surgeon Carlos Hidalgo said he joined the hunger strike after a patient arrived with an open fracture of the tibia and femur and there was no saline solution to clean the wound.

“They went to a kiosk and bought water to wash him with that,” he said. An infection set in and the patient’s leg was amputated.

“That’s why we protested, not because of our working conditions,” said Hidalgo, who makes 16,000 bolivars a month, equivalent to about $25 at the weaker of two official exchange rates and just $16 on the black market.

Some doctors are also worried about their legal liability. Medics in the city of Barquisimeto decided to ask patients’ relatives to sign a permission slip acknowledging the poor conditions they were working under.

At hospitals there, medics have held two strikes this year. Surgeries were halted on a recent day due to lack of gloves.

Idabelias Arias, the head of the emergency ward at a pediatric hospital in Barquisimeto, has had to use basic CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation) to revive children for lack of adrenaline. “Doctors are doing war medicine here.”

(Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Kieran Murray)