Tag Archives: Police

Philippine police van drives at protesters to break up anti-U.S. demo

SWAT team prepares tear gas in Philippines

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine police used tear gas to disperse about 1,000 anti-U.S. protesters outside the U.S. embassy in Manila on Wednesday, as television news footage showed a patrol van, which had come under attack, driving at demonstrators.

The rally came as President Rodrigo Duterte visits Beijing to strengthen relations with the world’s second-largest economy amid deteriorating ties with former colonial power the United States, sparked by his controversial war on illegal drugs.

Police made 29 arrests at the rally while at least 10 people were taken to hospital after being hit by the police van, Renato Reyes, secretary general of left-wing activist group Bayan (Nation), told reporters.

The protesters were calling for the removal of U.S. troops in the southern island of Mindanao.

“There was absolutely no justification (for the police violence),” Reyes said. “Even as the president avowed an independent foreign policy, Philippine police forces still act as running dogs of the U.S.”

In a series of conflicting statements, Duterte has insulted U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S. ambassador in Manila for questioning his war on drugs, which has led to the deaths of 2,300 suspected users and pushers. He told Obama to “go to hell” and alluded to severing ties with Washington.

Then, after weeks of anti-American rhetoric, Duterte said the Philippines would maintain its existing defense treaties and its military alliances.

The comments have left Americans and U.S. businesses in the Philippines jittery about their future.

(Reporting by Ronn Bautista and Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Two Indianapolis shootings targeting law enforcement possibly linked

By Timothy Mclaughlin

(Reuters) – Two shootings this month targeting police in Indianapolis may be related, police said on Friday, a day after shots again struck law enforcement offices in the Indiana capital.

In both Thursday’s shooting and a similar incident on Oct. 4, officers were in the buildings that were hit but none were injured, police said.

According to a police statement, “initial investigative information points to the same suspect (or suspects)” involved in the earlier shooting, which targeted the department’s Northwest District Police Headquarters.

The shootings come at a time of intense debate over policing in the United States and use of excessive force against minorities, with numerous cities grappling with how to improve strained relations between law enforcement and citizens.

On Thursday around 11 p.m. local time, officers inside the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s North District Headquarters heard shots and took cover, the statement said.

They did not find a suspect but witnesses heard a vehicle speeding away. Walls and windows sustained damage and a vehicle in the parking lot was also hit, it said.

Sergeant Kendale Adams, spokesman for the department, said on Friday police did not know how many shots were fired or how many hit the building. Adams said police do not have a motive for believe the shooting is linked to the earlier incident.

Police Chief Troy Riggs said multiple rounds hit the building in the first incident and asked the public for help in identifying the shooter.

“An armed attack on police headquarter is an attack on our community. Make no mistake, it is an attack on Indianapolis itself,” Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett said at a news conference after the first incident.

(Reporting by Timothy McLaughlin in Chicago; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Creepy clown sightings no laughing matter as Halloween nears

clown at clown convention

By Patricia Reaney

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sightings across the United States of creepy clowns with red lips and fixed smiles are have become anything but a laughing matter and have cast a menacing tone as Halloween approaches.

Since late August, the trend of trying to scare unsuspecting people has grown with scary-looking clowns lurking in woods, appearing on dark roads or driving in cars, some brandishing knives.

The spine-chilling sightings have been reported in states ranging from California and Minnesota to South Carolina, New Jersey and New York and have generated the hashtag #IfISeeAClown and @ClownSightings on Twitter, which has 335,000 followers.

Even the White House weighed in on the sightings. Press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters in response to a question at a briefing that local police take it quite seriously.

“If anything is suspicious, anything, be it somebody verbally or physically acting menacing in any type of costume, notify the police right away,” said Capt. Laurence Martin of the Wayne Police Department in New Jersey, which responded to a report of a clown sighting last week.

In nearby Fair Lawn, where young adults were stopped following a scary clown sighting report, police said trick-or-treaters should be vigilant.

“Have a heightened awareness about what is going on around you,” said Sgt. Brian Metzler of the Fair Lawn Police Department.

Best-selling author Stephen King, whose 1986 novel “It” weaves a tale of a Maine town being terrorized by a supernatural being that appears as a clown named Pennywise, took to Twitter to address the phenomenon.

“Hey, guys, time to cool the clown hysteria – most of em are good, cheer up the kiddies, make people laugh,” he said in a recent post.

A film adaptation of King’s book is due to be released next year but the studio has denied any link to the scary clown sightings.

While the reports and hoax calls have been a headache for police, a concern for parents and resulted in arrests in some states, it has been a boost for online costume stores.

“There has been a bit of an uptick,” said Leigh Wendinger, the inbound marketing manager for Minnesota online retailer HalloweenCostumes.com.

She said clown costumes are up about 40 percent this year but it was difficult to say if it is due to the creepy clown sightings.

Online retailer HalloweenExpress.com has seen a three-fold rise in clown masks this year. The Kentucky-based company said eight of the top 10 sellers are evil or scary clown masks this season, compared to five in the top ten last year.

Motive sought in fatal shooting at Washington state mall after arrest

Authorities at the Cascade Mall

(Reuters) – Investigators were working to determine what led a gunman to open fire and kill five people in a department store at a Washington state mall, police said on Sunday after arresting a 20-year-old suspect in the deadly rampage.

Police took Turkish-born Arcan Cetin into custody on Saturday evening in Oak Harbor, about 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Burlington where the shooting occurred on Friday night.

Cetin’s demeanor when apprehended was “zombie like,” police said at a news conference. He was unarmed and did not run from officers, they said.

A motive for the rampage remains unclear and Cetin, who is due to appear in court on Monday, has not been charged.

The FBI said while they had no indication the attack was a “terrorism act,” it could not rule out that possibility.

Cetin, who police said is a legal, permanent resident of the United States, is accused of opening fire in the cosmetics section of a Macy’s department store at Cascade Mall, killing four women and a man.

Surveillance video showed the suspect entering the mall without a rifle but he was later spotted on video in the store brandishing a weapon, police said. The rifle was recovered at the mall.

The attack followed a series of violent outbursts at shopping centers across the United States, including the stabbing of nine people at a Minnesota center last weekend.

It comes at a time of heightened tensions in the United States after a succession of seemingly random attacks in public places, ranging from a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

Investigators planned to search Cetin’s Oak Harbor residence, vehicle and interview witnesses on Sunday to collect evidence and “build as good as a case as you can,” said Sergeant Mark Francis, a spokesman for the Washington State Police.

Police have reports that Cetin’s ex-girlfriend worked at the Macy’s, Francis said. The possible connection was under investigation.

Cetin has a criminal record that includes three domestic violence charges in which his stepfather was the victim, the Seattle Times reported, citing court records.

He also was arrested for drunken driving and barred by a judge in December from possessing a firearm, the newspaper reported without providing details. Reuters was unable to confirm the reports.

Police did not identify the victims but local media said they ranged in age from mid-teens to mid-90s, and included a mother and her daughter. The Skagit County Coroner’s Office said it planned to release information about shooting victims on Monday.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco and Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Louise Heavens and Bill Trott)

Charlotte police brace for NFL game after release of shooting video

The National Guard arrives as people gather outside the football stadium as the NFL's Carolina Panthers host the Minnesota Vikings, to protest the police shooting of Keith Scott, in Charlotte, North Carolina

By Robert MacMillan and Mike Blake

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Reuters) – Officials in Charlotte, North Carolina on Sunday geared up for further protests over the police killing of a black man, a day after police released videos of the confrontation that did not show whether the victim had a gun when he was shot.

After nearly a week of protests, city officials were preparing for extra security at a National Football League game between the Carolina Panthers and the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday afternoon, bracing for more demonstrations over the killing of Keith Scott, 43, who police said was armed when officers shot him on Tuesday.

Small groups of police in riot gear stood around Bank of America Stadium as fans arrived about two hours before kick-off in a jovial mood. Officers shook hands with some of them and posed for pictures as a group of about 30 protesters gathered with signs.

“Black lives matter,” the demonstrators chanted. “We don’t need no riot gear. Why are you in riot gear?”

Scott’s death has made Charlotte, the state’s largest city and one of the U.S. Southeast’s most vibrant urban centers, the latest flashpoint in two years of tense protests over U.S. police killings of black men, most of them unarmed.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said his department expects to “expend significant public safety resources” at the arena, which can hold more than 70,000 people.

Charlotte declared the game an “extraordinary event” under its municipal code, giving police the power to stop people from carrying blades, projectiles and other objects into a certain area.

The previous night, hundreds of people marched through the city center on a fifth night of demonstrations that stretched into Sunday morning, including white and black families protesting police violence.

A Panthers fan sympathized with the protesters but did not think they would succeed in changing policing.

“I get the message the protesters are trying to send,” Joe Mader, 24, said. “I think it’s smart that they’re out here. I’m happy to have them here.”

A football fan takes a selfie with police, who are part of a large security presence, outside the football stadium as the NFL's Carolina Panthers host the Minnesota Vikings amid protesting of the police shooting of Keith Scott, in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S., September 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake

A football fan takes a selfie with police, who are part of a large security presence, outside the football stadium as the NFL’s Carolina Panthers host the Minnesota Vikings amid protesting of the police shooting of Keith Scott, in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S., September 25, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake

On Saturday, police released videos showing Scott’s shooting in the parking lot of a Charlotte apartment complex.

Putney acknowledged that the videos themselves were “insufficient” to prove Scott held a gun but said other evidence completed the picture.

Police said officers trying to serve an arrest warrant for a different person caught sight of Scott with marijuana and a gun, sitting in a car in a parking lot.

Both Scott’s family and protesters have disputed the police statements that Scott was carrying a gun.

Police released photos of a marijuana cigarette, an ankle holster they said Scott was wearing, and a handgun, which they said was loaded and had Scott’s fingerprints and DNA.

But Scott’s family, which released its own video of the encounter on Friday, said the police footage showed the father of seven was not acting aggressively and that the police shooting made no sense, with no attempt to de-escalate the situation. The family video, shot by Scott’s wife, was also inconclusive on the question of a gun.

In one of the police videos, a dashboard-mounted camera from a squad car showed Scott exiting his vehicle and then backing away from it. Police shout to him to drop a gun, but it is not clear that Scott is holding anything. Four shots then ring out and Scott drops to the ground.

A second video, taken with an officer’s body camera, fails to capture the shooting. It briefly shows Scott standing outside his vehicle before he is shot, but it is not clear whether he has something in his hand. The officer then moves and Scott is out of view until he is seen lying on the ground.

At least five people who appear to be police officers are seen in the bodycam video. Both videos show Scott moving at a measured pace with his hands at his sides.

Another lawyer for the Scott family, Charles Monnett, said, the family did not know enough of the facts to know whether the officer who killed Scott should face charges.

The two-minute video recorded by Scott’s wife on a cell phone showed the scene of the shooting, but not the shooting itself. In the video, Mrs. Scott can be heard telling officers that her husband has TBI, a traumatic brain injury.

“Don’t shoot him! He has no weapon” she cries as police yell at Scott, “Drop the gun!” Then shots sound.

(Writing by Peter Henderson and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Michael Perry and Andrea Ricci)

Peaceful protest in Charlotte as police chose not to enforce curfew

Protesters walk in the streets downtown during another night of protests over the police shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte

By Andy Sullivan and Robert MacMillan

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Reuters) – Largely peaceful protests dwindled early on Friday in Charlotte, North Carolina, as police chose not to enforce a curfew prompted by two nights of riots after a black man was shot to death by a police officer.

A crowd of hundreds gathered, chanted and marched for a third successive night in the city of about 810,000 people, demanding justice for Keith Scott, 43, who was shot dead by a black police officer in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Tuesday afternoon.

Scott’s death is the latest to stir passions in the United States over the police use of force against black men. It has stirred broad debate on race and justice in the United States and given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

He was the 214th black person killed by U.S. police this year out of an overall total of 821, according to Mapping Police Violence, another group created out of the protest movement. There is no national-level government data on police shootings.

A U.S. Congressman from North Carolina scrambled to apologize after telling the BBC in a broadcast interview that he believed that the protesters were motivated by jealousy.

“They hate white people because white people are successful and they’re not,” Robert Pittenger said in a televised interview late Thursday.

He later apologized on Twitter, saying, “What is taking place in my hometown breaks my heart. Today, my anguish led me to respond to a reporter’s question in a way that I regret.”

The Charlotte Police Department said on Twitter that two officers were treated after they were sprayed with a chemical agent by demonstrators and that no civilians were injured on Thursday.

Despite the brief outbursts, Thursday night’s demonstrations were calmer than those on the previous two nights in North Carolina’s largest city. Rioters had smashed storefront windows, looted businesses and thrown objects at police, prompting officials to declare a state of emergency and a curfew.

A protester who was shot on Wednesday died on Thursday. Nine people were injured and 44 were arrested in riots on Wednesday and Thursday morning.

Scott’s family viewed videos of the episode on Thursday and asked for them to be made public, stepping up the pressure on authorities.

In an interview with Reuters early Friday, Justin Bamberg, one of the lawyers who is representing Scott’s family, said the video shows that the 43-year-old did not make any aggressive moves towards police.

“There’s nothing in that video that shows him acting aggressively, threatening or maybe dangerous,” Bamberg said.

Scott, who suffered head trauma in a bad car accident a year ago, was moving slowly as he got out of the car, he said.

“He’s not an old man, but he’s moving like an old man” in the video, Bamberg said.

Earlier in the day, Bamberg said in a statement that it was “impossible to discern” from the videos what, if anything, Scott was holding in his hands.

Police say Scott was carrying a gun when he approached officers and ignored repeated orders to drop it. His family previously said he was holding a book, not a firearm, and now says it has more questions than answers after viewing two videos recorded by police body cameras.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney has said the video supported the police account of what happened but does not definitively show Scott pointing a gun at officers.

In contrast to the tension in Charlotte, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was calm after a white police officer was charged with first-degree manslaughter on Thursday for a fatal shooting also captured on video. Police released a video of an unarmed black man, Terence Crutcher, being shot by the officer after his vehicle broke down on a highway.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Scott Malone; editing by Grant McCool)

Crime plagued Chicago to add nearly 1000 police officers

Chicago Police officers attend a news conference held by Superintendent Eddie Johnson announcing the department's plan to hire nearly 1,000 new police officers in Chicago

By Timothy Mclaughlin

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Chicago’s police department plans to hire nearly 1,000 officers over the next two years in a bid to combat a surge of violence in the third-largest U.S. city that has included more than 500 murders this year, the city’s police chief said on Wednesday.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the emphasis would be on bolstering a depleted detective division, increasing leadership and focusing on policing on the city’s most violent areas.

“This will make us a bigger department, a better department and more effective department,” Johnson told dozens of officers and reporters on Wednesday.

The department will add 516 patrol officers, 92 field-training officers, 112 sergeants, 50 lieutenants and 200 detectives, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a post on social media.

Johnson said that these new officers would result in an overall increase of sworn officer positions from around 12,500 to around 13,500. He said this increased level would be reached by the end of 2018.

Chicago is struggling with a wave of violence that has included 509 murders in the city already this year, according to Chicago Police Department statistics, a 46 percent increase from last year.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel had been reluctant to hire more officers, relying instead on existing officers to work overtime. He is scheduled to give a speech on the city’s crime problem on Thursday night.

Johnson said on Wednesday that he wanted to rebuild the detective unit. Figures show that this unit has dwindled to 922 from 1,252 in 2008.

Over the past 10 years Chicago has consistently had one of the lowest murder clearance rates of unsolved cases of any of the country’s 10 biggest cities, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Chicago Police Department.

Johnson said that the decision to increase the police force came following discussions with the mayor but said that he had no information on how Chicago planned to pay for the addition of new officers.

The city of 2.7 million is struggling with chronic budget deficits, a big unfunded pension liability and falling credit ratings.

The mayor said on Wednesday that he would not raise taxes to pay for the new officers and that the city would have the resources to meet the cost but offered no details.

“It will be in black and white in the budget,” he said.

(Editing by Will Dunham and Diane Craft)

Charlotte, N.C. in state of emergency after second night of violence

People running from flash bang grenades at Charlotte riot

By Greg Lacour and Andy Sullivan

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Reuters) – Residents of Charlotte, North Carolina, woke to a state of emergency on Thursday with National Guard troops deployed on the streets after a second night of violent protests over the fatal police shooting of a black man.

One person was on life support after being shot by a civilian late Wednesday as riot police used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades to try to disperse demonstrators who looted stores and threw rocks, bottles and fireworks.

Four police officers suffered non-life threatening injuries, city officials said.

The latest trouble erupted after a peaceful rally earlier in the evening by protesters who reject the official account of how Keith Scott, 43, was gunned down by a black police officer in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Tuesday afternoon.

Authorities say Scott was wielding a handgun and was shot after refusing commands to drop it. His family and a witness say he was holding a book, not a firearm, when he was killed.

A spokesman for the Charlotte Fraternal Order of Police told CNN on Thursday he had seen video from the scene showing Scott holding a gun.

Scott’s wife, Rakeyia Scott, said on Wednesday evening that her family was “devastated” and had “more questions than answers” about her husband’s death.

She said she respected the rights of those who wanted to demonstrate, and asked that they do so peacefully.

But the pleas appeared to go mostly unheeded. Overnight, protesters smashed windows and glass doors at a downtown Hyatt hotel and punched two employees, the hotel’s manager told Reuters. The slogan “Black Lives Matter” was spray-painted on windows.

Looters were seen smashing windows and grabbed items from a convenience store as well as a shop that sells athletic wear for the National Basketball Association’s Charlotte Hornets. Protesters also set fire to trash cans.

It was the second night of unrest in North Carolina’s largest city and one of the biggest U.S. financial centers. Sixteen police officers and several protesters were injured on Tuesday night and in the early hours of Wednesday.

‘VIOLENCE NOT TOLERATED’

Governor Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency late Wednesday night and began the process of deploying the National Guard and state highway patrol officers to the city to help restore peace.

“Any violence directed toward our citizens or police officers or destruction of property should not be tolerated,” McCrory said in a statement.

Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts was considering a curfew and Bank of America Corp <BAC.N>, which is headquartered in Charlotte, told employees not to report to work at its uptown offices, local media reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union has called on the police in Charlotte to release camera footage of the incident. Authorities have said the officer who shot Scott, Brentley Vinson, was in plainclothes and not wearing a body camera. But according to officials, video was recorded by other officers and by cameras mounted on patrol cars.

Todd Walther, the Charlotte Fraternal Order of Police official, said the plainclothes officers were wearing vests marked “police” and that he saw them do nothing wrong. Releasing the video would satisfy some people, but not everyone, he added, and people will have to wait for the investigation to conclude.

“The clear facts will come out and the truth will come out. It’s unfortunate to say that we have to be patient, but that’s the way it’s going to have to be,” Walter said.Mayor Roberts said she planned to view the footage on Thursday, but did not indicate if or when it would be made public.

The killing of Scott came just days after a fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in Tulsa, Oklahoma that was recorded on video. Protesters have held peaceful rallies demanding the arrest of the female officer involved.

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke by telephone on Wednesday with the mayors of Charlotte and Tulsa, a White House official said.

The two deaths were the latest in a series of police shootings over the last couple of years that have raised questions about racial bias in U.S. law enforcement. They have also made policing and community relations a major topic ahead of the presidential election in November.

William Barber, president of North Carolina’s chapter of the NAACP, called for the “full release of all facts available,” and said NAACP officials planned to meet with city officials and members of Scott’s family on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Investigators try to determine if accused New York bomber had help

robot retrieving unexploded bomb

By David Ingram and Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. authorities on Wednesday were looking into whether an Afghan-born American citizen charged with carrying out bombings in New York and New Jersey acted alone or had help as the city’s top federal public defender sought access to the suspect.

Police in New York City said they had not yet been permitted by doctors to speak to Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, who was arrested on Monday after being wounded in a gunfight with police in Linden, New Jersey.

Rahami has been charged with wounding 31 people in a bombing in New York on Saturday that authorities called a “terrorist act.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation released a photo of two men who found a second, unexploded pressure cooker device they say Rahami left in a piece of luggage in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday night.

The two men, who took the bag but left the improvised bomb on the street are not suspects, officials said, but investigators want to interview them as witnesses.

“As far as whether he’s a lone actor, that’s still the path we are following, but we are keeping all the options open,” William Sweeney, the FBI’s assistant director in New York, told reporters.

Rahami is also charged with planting a bomb that exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey, but did not injure anyone and planting explosive devices in his hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, which did not detonate. He faces charges from federal prosecutors in both states.

Federal prosecutors portray Rahami, who came to the United States at age 7 and became a naturalized citizen, as embracing militant Islamic views, begging for martyrdom and expressing outrage at the U.S. “slaughter” of Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine.

Investigators were also probing Rahami’s history of travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and looking for evidence that he may have picked up radical views or trained in bomb-making.

Both government and pro-Taliban sources in Pakistan on Wednesday said they had no knowledge of Rahami having met with prominent people connected to the Taliban or other religious groups.

Prosecutors plan to move Rahami to New York from the New Jersey hospital where he is being treated as soon as his medical condition allows, said Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.

DEFENSE LAWYER DEMANDS COURT APPEARANCE

Rahami’s wife met with U.S. law enforcement officials while in the United Arab Emirates and voluntarily gave a statement, a law enforcement official said on Wednesday. She was not in custody.

A New Jersey U.S. congressman previously said Rahami had emailed his office in 2014 for help in getting her a visa to enter the United States from Pakistan when she was pregnant.

Rahami’s defense attorney, David Patton, on Wednesday demanded that his first court appearance to be scheduled as soon as possible, even if it occurs in his hospital bed, saying that the defendant had a constitutional right to a lawyer and a court appearance within two days of his arrest.

New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill told a news conference that investigators had not yet received doctors’ clearance to interview Rahami, adding, “That may happen in the next 24 hours, pending the doctors’ approval.”

Federal prosecutors in New York noted that while they had filed charges against Rahami, he remained in the custody of state officials in New Jersey, who initially arrested him after Monday’s gunfight. They said that makes Patton’s request for access premature.

Patton, in a subsequent filing, shot back that such delays were unacceptable.

“Mr. Rahami was arrested more than 48 hours ago. His bail in New Jersey was set without any appointment of counsel or court appearance. He still has not been provided counsel. He does not have a scheduled court appearance in New Jersey until next week,” Patton said.

The attacks in New York and New Jersey were the latest in a series in the United States inspired by Islamic militant groups including al Qaeda and Islamic State. A pair of ethnic Chechen brothers killed three people and injured more than 260 at the 2013 Boston Marathon with homemade pressure-cooker bombs similar to those used in this weekend’s attacks.

Rahami, in other parts of a journal that prosecutors said he was carrying when he was arrested, praised “Brother” Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader slain in a 2011 U.S. raid in Pakistan; Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric and leading al Qaeda propagandist who was killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike in Yemen; and Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, house Homeland Security Committee chairman, told CNN that Rahami’s writings in a journal showed that his actions had been inspired by Islamic State as “his guidance came from the lead ISIS spokesman.”

“What that tells me as a counterterrorism expert that now we can definitively say this was an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack.”

(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Julia Edwards in Washington and Mehreen Zahra-Malik in Quetta, Pakistan; Writing by Scott Malone and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Will Dunham and Alan Crosby)

Protest erupts after police kill black man in North Carolina

Protesters in Charlotte over the death of a black man

By Greg Lacour

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Reuters) – Protesters blocked a highway and clashed with police in Charlotte, North Carolina, early on Wednesday morning after officers fatally shot a black man they said had a gun when they approached him in a parking lot.

About a dozen officers and several protesters suffered non-life threatening injuries during an hours-long demonstration near where Keith Lamont Scott, 43, was shot by a policeman on Tuesday afternoon, police and local media said on social media.

Early Wednesday morning, protesters blocked Interstate 85, where they stole boxes from trucks and started fires before police used flash grenades in an attempt to disperse the angry crowd, an ABC affiliate in Charlotte reported.

A group of protesters then tried to break into a Walmart store before police arrived and began guarding its front entryway, video footage by local media showed.

Earlier in the evening, police in riot gear reportedly used tear gas on protesters who threw rocks and water bottles at them as they wielded large sticks and blocked traffic. One officer was sent to the hospital after being struck in the head by a rock, police said.

Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts urged for calm.

“The community deserves answers and (a) full investigation will ensue,” she said on Twitter, adding in a subsequent post, “I want answers too.”

Scott was shot by officer Brentley Vinson earlier in the day, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police. The shooting occurred when officers were at an apartment complex searching for a suspect with an outstanding warrant and they saw Scott get out of his vehicle with a firearm, the department said.

Vinson fired his weapon and struck Scott, who “posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers,” the department said in a statement.

Vinson, who joined the Charlotte police force in July 2014, is black, according to the department. He has been placed on paid administrative leave.

NATIONAL DEBATE

The fatal shooting came amid an intense national debate over the use of deadly force by police, particularly against black men.

Police did not immediately say if Scott was the suspect they had originally sought at the apartment complex. WSOC-TV, a local television station, reported that he was not.

Detectives recovered the gun Scott was holding at the time of the shooting and were interviewing witnesses, police said.

Protesters and Scott’s family disputed that the dead man was armed. Some family members told reporters that Scott had been holding a book and was waiting for his son to be dropped off from school.

Shakeala Baker, who lives in a neighboring apartment complex, said she had seen Scott in the parking lot on previous afternoons waiting for his child. But on Tuesday, she watched as medics tended to Scott after he was shot, she said.

“This is just sad,” said Baker, 31. “I get tired of seeing another black person shot every time I turn on the television. But (police are) scared for their own lives. So if they’re scared for their lives, how are they going to protect us?”

About 200 people gathered earlier Tuesday night for a peaceful protest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a white officer killed an unarmed black man last week in an incident captured on police videos.

Lawyers for the family of Terence Crutcher, 40, disputed that he posed any threat before he was shot by Tulsa Officer Betty Shelby after his sport utility vehicle broke down on Friday.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Tom Heneghan)