Tag Archives: Police

San Francisco police search blacks, Hispanics more than whites: panel

Police standing on Lombard Street

By Curtis Skinner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Three former judges examining accusations of racial bias by police in San Francisco said in a report released on Monday that black and Hispanic people were more likely to be searched without their consent by officers than whites and Asians.

The panel released its report as the United States reeled over the slayings of five police officers in Dallas who were on duty at a protest over the slayings of black men in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis.

“The panel found indications of institutionalized bias and institutional weaknesses in the department,” Anand Subramanian, executive director of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Transparency, Accountability, and Fairness in Law Enforcement, said at a news conference.

The panel, consisting of retired state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, retired Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell and retired federal Judge Dickran M. Tevrizian, was convened by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón in March 2015 after racist text messages sent and received by San Francisco officers were made public.

San Francisco Police said in a statement after the report was released that they appreciated the panel’s efforts and would review the findings before turning over their analysis to Justice Department.

The panel said in a 240-page report that blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be searched after traffic stops than whites or Asians yet less likely to be carrying contraband.

According to the report, of all non-consensual searches after traffic stops, 42 percent in 2015 involved black motorists. The U.S. Census showed that in 2015, blacks made up less than 6 percent of the city’s population of 865,000.

Hispanics, who made up about 15 percent of San Franciscans in 2015, accounted for 19 percent of non-consensual searches, while whites accounted for half the population, but 21 percent of non-consensual searches, the report said.

Asians made up more than a third of the population, but were searched without their consent fewer than 10 percent of the time, according to the report.

The report recommended that San Francisco’s police department should improve its training on implicit bias, procedural justice and racial profiling, and called for stronger oversight.

The San Francisco Police Officer’s Association called the report misleading and divisive.

“We’re sitting on a tinderbox and Gascón is lighting a match,” association president Martin Halloran said in a statement.

San Francisco’s police department has been roiled by protests since December after the videotaped fatal police shooting of a black man.

The death of Mario Woods, 26, prompted a U.S. Department of Justice review of the police department.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Sharon Bernstein)

Five people suspected of shooting at police arrested in Washington DC

(Reuters) – Five people suspected of shooting at police officers before barricading themselves inside a vehicle in Washington D.C. were arrested on Tuesday, police said.

No one was reported injured in the incident, which took place days after five police officers were fatally shot during a demonstration in Dallas to protest at police violence against black men and other minorities.

In the incident in Washington D.C., officers in marked patrol cars were responding to reports of gunshots just after midnight in the southeast of the city when at least one person inside a parked SUV opened fire on the patrol cars, a spokeswoman with the Metropolitan Police Department said.

The officers returned fire, the spokeswoman said, and the five suspects – three women and two men – hid inside the vehicle during a 30-minute standoff before surrendering.

It was not immediately clear why the suspects fired at police or what criminal charges they might face.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Dallas police chief says armed civilians in Texas ‘increasingly challenging’

Baton Rouge Protest

By Ernest Scheyder

DALLAS (Reuters) – The Dallas police chief stepped into America’s fierce gun rights debate on Monday when he said Texas state laws allowing civilians to carry firearms openly, as some did during a protest where five officers were killed, presented a growing law enforcement challenge.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown also gave new details about his department’s use of a bomb-carrying robot to kill Micah Johnson, the 25-year-old former U.S. Army reservist who carried out last Thursday’s sniper attack that also wounded nine officers.

A shooting in Michigan on Monday underscored the prevalence of gun violence in America and the danger faced by law enforcement, even as activists protest against the fatal police shootings of two black men last week in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Two sheriff’s bailiffs were shot to death at a courthouse in St. Joseph in southwestern Michigan, and the shooter was also killed, Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey told reporters.

By Monday evening, protesters were marching again in several large American cities, including Chicago, Sacramento, and Atlanta, where news footage showed a number of protesters being arrested after street demonstrations north of downtown.

President Barack Obama and others reiterated their calls for stricter guns laws after last month’s massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, but many conservatives responded that such measures could infringe on the U.S. Constitution’s protection of the right to bear arms.

Texas is known for its gun culture and state laws allow gun owners to carry their weapons in public. Some gun rights activists bring firearms to rallies as a political statement, as some did at Thursday’s march in Dallas.

“It is increasingly challenging when people have AR-15s (a type of rifle) slung over, and shootings occur in a crowd. And they begin running, and we don’t know if they are a shooter or not,” Brown said. “We don’t know who the ‘good guy’ versus who the ‘bad guy’ is, if everybody starts shooting.”

Seeing multiple people carrying rifles led police initially to believe they were under attack by multiple shooters.

Brown did not explicitly call for gun control laws, but said: “I was asked, well, what’s your opinion about guns? Well, ask the policymakers to do something and I’ll give you an opinion.”

“Do your job. We’re doing ours. We’re putting our lives on the line. Other aspects of government need to step up and help us,” he said.

‘SIMPLY MISTAKEN’

Rick Briscoe, legislative director of gun rights group Open Carry Texas, said Brown was “simply mistaken” in viewing armed civilians as a problem.

“It is really simple to tell a good guy from a bad guy,” Briscoe said. “If the police officer comes on the situation and he says: ‘Police, put the gun down,’ the good guy does. The bad guy probably continues doing what he was doing, or turns on the police officer.”

Police used a Northrop Grumman Corp <NOC.N> Mark5A-1 robot, typically deployed to inspect potential bombs, to kill Johnson after concluding during an hours-long standoff there was no safe way of taking him into custody, Brown said.

“They improvised this whole idea in about 15, 20 minutes,” Brown said.

“I asked the question of how much (explosives) we were using, and I said … ‘Don’t bring the building down.’ But that was the extent of my guidance.”

The incident is believed to have been the first time U.S. police had killed a suspect that way, and some civil liberties activists said it created a troubling precedent. Brown said that, in the context of Thursday’s events, “this wasn’t an ethical dilemma for me.”

The attack came at the end of a demonstration decrying police shootings of two black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and near St. Paul, Minnesota. Those were the latest in a series of high-profile killings of black men by police in various U.S. cities that have triggered protests.

In the shooting near St. Paul, the Star Tribune newspaper reported that the officers had pulled over 32-year-old Philando Castile because one of the patrolmen thought he and his girlfriend matched the description of suspects involved in a robbery.

In Dallas, a vigil was held for the slain officers on Monday evening.

In Chicago, images and footage on social media and news stations showed about 500 protesters marching through downtown after holding a quiet sit-in in Millennium Park that spilled into the streets and a rally near City Hall.

In Atlanta, media footage showed a number of handcuffed protesters being loaded onto a police bus surrounded by armed officers and emergency vehicles with lights flashing. Television station WSB-TV reported that police started arresting demonstrators marching on Peachtree Road at about 8:30 p.m.

In Sacramento, about 300 people were marching peacefully on Monday evening. Earlier in the day, in an incident not linked to protests, Sacramento police said officers fatally shot a man carrying a knife after he charged at police.

Johnson was in the U.S. Army Reserve from 2009 to 2015 and served for a time in Afghanistan. He had been disappointed in his experience in the military, his mother told TheBlaze.com in an interview shown online on Monday.

“The military was not what Micah thought it would be,” Delphine Johnson said. “He was very disappointed. Very disappointed.”

The Dallas police chief, who is black, urged people upset about police conduct to consider joining his force.

“Get off that protest line and put an application in, and we’ll put you in your neighborhood, and we will help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about,” Brown said.

(Additonal reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, Fiona Ortiz and Justin Madden in Chicago, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, and David Beasley in Atlanta; Writing by Daniel Wallis, Scott Malone and Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Will Dunham, Peter Cooney and Paul Tait)

Dallas Protesters embrace the force that took bullets for them

A Dallas police officer wears a custom mourning band and a flower at a makeshift memorial at police headquarters following the multiple police shootings in Dallas, Texas, U.S

By Ernest Scheyder and Brian Thevenot

DALLAS (Reuters) – Dallas police detective Frederick Frazier strained to lift the dead weight of a fallen fellow officer from a hospital gurney and put him into a body bag. He pulled the zipper closed.

Frazier stared down, thinking – this man does exactly what I do; has a family just like mine. He’s not going home.

Frederick was among about 100 officers who had seen all five fatally shot Dallas policemen arrive at the emergency room of Parkland Memorial Hospital near the Oak Lawn section of the city early on Friday morning.

Seven others, and two civilians, were wounded. They had all been shot on Thursday night by one brutally proficient shooter who police and protesters initially believed was a small army carrying out a choreographed assault. The shooter, in later conversations with police during a standoff, suggested he was avenging a spate of police shootings of black men.

In the city’s struggle to cope with the aftershocks of the deadliest day for law enforcement in America since the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks, a Blue Lives Matter movement has emerged here. It has been embraced by protesters who witnessed the slaughter of officers who had walked with them, taken selfies with them as they protested shootings by police nationwide.

The attack on police complicates the already angst-ridden debate over officer-involved shootings. But many citizens, officers and officials of all political stripes here have so far responded by embracing one another, raising hopes for a softening of hardened positions and often vicious rhetoric.

“We are a polarized people,” said the Rev. Dr. Michael W. Waters from the pulpit on Sunday at Joy Tabernacle A.M.E. Church in Cedar Crest neighborhood, south of downtown Dallas. “Individuals believe that, if you are one thing, you can’t be another thing … but standing for justice does not mean standing against all police officers.”

Dallas now finds itself at the center of a tense national debate about whether police are the problem or solution, victimizers or victims. The city would seem to be an unlikely target for retaliation against police shootings, given that its officers have not shot a single suspect – of any race – so far this year, compared with 23 such incidents in the whole of 2012.

The decrease follows an intensive effort to train officers in the appropriate use of force.

Violent crime in Dallas has been slashed by nearly half between 2003 and last year, when there were 9,038 violent crime incidents, according to Dallas Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation records.

Still, the department – along with the city of Dallas and much of Texas – struggles to overcome a history of racial strife.

WATCHING THE WOUNDED ARRIVE

In the Parkland Memorial E.R., the wounded officers arrived, one by one. Frazier watched, trying to assess each one’s chances. Two seemed lifeless. They weren’t going to make it. Another, Mike Smith, 55, came in talking.

Frazier was almost sure he would live.

Then, soon after, the surgeon delivered the news: Smith had died in surgery, Frazier said.

Nurses wept, he said. Doctors were devastated.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown was among those at Parkland Memorial, consoling officers and their families, starting at about 2 a.m., Frazier said. Nearly an hour later, Brown walked into a room in the E.R. with more news.

“They just got him,” Frazier recalled the chief saying.

Minutes before, in a parking garage at El Centro Community College, the Dallas SWAT team had ended the standoff with Johnson by sending in a robot and detonating a pound of C4 explosives. The gunman – later identified as Army Reserve combat veteran Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, of Mesquite, Texas – told police he had come to kill white police officers.

He killed four of them – Lorne Ahrens, 48; Michael Krol, 40; Brent Thomson, 43; and Smith. He also gunned down Hispanic officer Patrick Zamarripa, 32, a Navy reservist and a U.S. Marine veteran.

The chief, it seemed, had hoped the news would lift the somber mood in the room, Frazier said.

Spokespeople for the Dallas Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for official department comment on this story.

‘MASS OF HUMANITY’

Minutes before the shootings, Waters, the pastor, had addressed the crowds of protesters downtown. Then he saw what he later called “a mass of humanity” stampeding toward him as he ducked behind a pillar.

Among those in the crowd was Marcus McNeil, 19, a sophomore offensive lineman on the Southern Methodist University football team. As the shooting started, McNeil saw the fear in the faces of the police officers around him.

“Active shooter! Active shooter!”

The message spread from officers through the crowd as the wave of panic rose with the flurry of rifle shots.

McNeil fled with his best friend, Tessa Johnson, 19, a fellow SMU student. He watched as officers first tried to hurry protesters out of harm’s way, then rushed toward the gunfire with guns drawn.

Minutes before, during the protest, McNeil could not have felt safer, surrounded by officers who seemed determined to protect the crowd’s right to publicly air their grievances with law enforcement, and to engage with them warmly.

“They were absolutely amazing. They actually led, and blocked off the streets as we went,” McNeil recalled. “There was a loving spirit; no negativity among anyone; just kindness.”

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS

Two days later, that spirit returned to Joy Tabernacle A.M.E. Church, where a predominantly black crowd of about 50 congregants made the joyful noise of a thousand. Waters founded the church seven years ago and remains senior pastor.

Sharmeene Hayes, 45, opened the Sunday service with a prayer.

“Send a peace across the city of Dallas that surpasses all understanding,” she implored. “We thank you, Lord, for our police officers. Post your guardian angels over them.”

Off to the right, Dallas police officer Margarita Argumedo, wearing her uniform, swayed gently to the boisterous gospel music filling the small room. She leaned on the chair in front of her, her eyes closed, for minutes at a time, praying and resting. She had not slept much since Thursday.

Neither had fellow police officer Chelsea Whitaker, who sat two rows ahead.

Both women, who had been invited to the service, were celebrated and given the opportunity to speak. Whitaker offered a gripping portrait of everyday threats officers face.

“Part of my job is serving warrants for the U.S. Marshal’s Service,” she said. “If somebody killed somebody, I’m coming through the door. If somebody raped somebody, I’m coming through the door. If somebody robbed somebody … Violent crime is what me and my team do.”

Argumedo asked for prayers, and for rest.

“You can’t sleep,” she said. “When you lay down, you start thinking about those that didn’t come back.”

Waters referenced the teachings of Jesus in the biblical book of Matthew. He at first spoke softly, then in a rising, rhythmic style that is the hallmark of many African-American preachers.

By the time he hammered home the essential challenge of the sermon – and the past week’s bloodshed – his baritone voice shook the room.

“Do you truly think that all lives matter?” he roared. “If you want to be a peacemaker – if you want to be like Jesus – we have to love our enemies and pray for those who despise us.

“If you think that black lives matter, then you know that all lives matter – and that blue lives matter. Can you honor and celebrate those officers who protect us every day? … If you stand with those who are criticized, you will get closer to God.”

(Reporting by Brian Thevenot and Ernest Scheyder, additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and Marice Richter in Dallas; editing by Ross Colvin)

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)

Dallas Mother thanks police for shielding her and her son

A makeshift memorial at Dallas Police Headquarters one day after a lone gunman ambushed and killed five police officers at a protest decrying police shootings

DALLAS (Reuters) – When the bullet struck her leg during the protest in downtown Dallas, Shetamia Taylor’s first thoughts were for her four sons.

Taylor tackled the nearest boy to the ground then looked up to see a police officer racing to shield them from the gunfire.

“That officer jumped on top of me and covered me and my son and there was another one at our feet, and there was another one over our head,” Taylor told reporters on Sunday.

“I’m thankful for all of them, because they had no regard for their own life.”

Pushed into the news conference at Baylor University Medical Center in a wheelchair and hospital gown, Taylor wept as she recounted seeing two officers shot in front of her.

One was a tall, white, bald policeman. “As he was going down, he said, ‘He has a gun. Run,'” she recalled.

Police said a military veteran killed five officers on Thursday in a rampage that was the most deadly day for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Taylor, 37, said when she first heard the gunfire, she thought it might be fireworks left over from Fourth of July celebrations. She said the attack left her hurt and angry.

“Why would he do that?” she asked of the gunman, identified by authorities as Micah X. Johnson, 25.

Johnson launched his ambush during a protest against the killing by police of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana, one of a string of demonstrations nationwide.

Taylor had attended with her four sons, aged 12 to 17.

“I was scared, I really didn’t know what was going to happen,” Jamar Taylor, 12, told reporters, breaking into sobs as he described becoming separated from his mother.

Taylor said, in her opinion, the police were not all “out to get us” and that people should reserve judgment.

“Please, just stop and think,” she said. “I tell my kids all the time, you know, ‘Closed mouth, open mind will get you a long way in life.’ Sometimes, just be quiet and think first.”

Another of her sons, Wavion Washington, hailed the officer who shielded them as they escaped.

“He was really selfless and he put himself in harm’s way … to protect us.” Washington told the news conference. “So, we understand that there are a few bad apples out there, but they don’t spoil the whole bunch.”

(Reporting by Reuters Television; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by David Gregorio)

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)

Wave of anti-police protests strains U.S. law enforcement

People hold their hands in the air as they yell "hands up, don't shoot!" during a protest for the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in the Manhattan borough of New York

By Curtis Skinner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A wave of anti-police protests since the 2014 killing of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, is creating strains at law enforcement agencies across the United States, forcing out some police chiefs and top prosecutors.

A driving force behind the change has been Black Lives Matter, a national organization whose name is a potent symbol for demonstrators railing against police violence, according to law enforcement officials and academics.

“What Black Lives Matter has been able to do is to maintain a focus on this issue and a persistence that has lasted for over two years now,” said Jody Armour, a professor at University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law.

Armour, who has expertise in police and racial profiling, called the movement “the power of democracy unleashed.”

“Black Lives Matter” has again been used as a rallying cry in the cases of two unarmed black men shot dead by police this week in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis, and organizers have begun mobilizing.

Formed in 2012 after the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Florida, Black Lives Matter’s national profile exploded in mid-2014 after white police officer Darren Wilson shot dead unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson.

Angry protests have roiled the country since, and police chiefs and top prosecutors in big and small cities have been ousted.

In San Francisco, the police killing of 26-year-old Mario Woods in December sparked months of protests and demands for the ouster of police chief Greg Suhr. In May, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee asked him to step down, saying tensions between police and people of color had “come into full view.”

In Chicago, two-term Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez lost her Democratic primary bid by a landslide in March, after activists dogged her campaign over her handling of the 2014 police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Her loss came just months after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ousted then-police superintendent Garry McCarthy, saying it was an “undeniable fact” that public trust in police had eroded. As evidence, he cited Black Lives Matter protests organized after a video of the killing was released.

BATON ROUGE AND MINNEAPOLIS

The group has used demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience to pressure police chiefs and elected officials. At times their lead has been followed by more established groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and local clergy, as was the case in Chicago.

Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said local politicians were much more responsible for the string of departures and firings than protesters.

“I know from being involved in this work for around 50 years, that (since Ferguson) we’ve seen more of these political terminations than we’ve seen in years past,” he said.

Hundreds of demonstrators converged on a convenience store in Baton Rouge on Wednesday where two police officers fatally shot 37-year-old Alton Sterling, an unarmed black man who was selling CDs, early on Tuesday morning.

Protesters on Thursday also gathered at the mansion of Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton in St. Paul, about 10 miles (15 km) southeast of where 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot by a police officer after a traffic stop on Wednesday.

Both of the killings were captured on video.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said heightened media attention and the ubiquity of cell phones have fueled recent firings and resignations.

“There’s a far greater public awareness that’s going on and it’s increased (protesters’) ability to affect the process,” Pasco said.

He said the attention has made police chiefs an easy scapegoat for politicians aiming to quell unrest.

“Whenever there is a problem, is Rahm Emanuel going to resign or is he going to fire the police chief?” Pasco said, referring to the Chicago mayor. “Is the mayor of San Francisco going to resign, or is he going to fire the police chief? That’s the question.”

Melina Abdullah, professor and chair of pan-African studies at California State University Los Angeles, said keeping the heat on elected officials has been critical to the movement’s success.

“With sustained pressure there, we can make sure there is a response,” said Abdullah, an organizer of the local Black Lives Matter chapter. “We know another murder is going to happen.”

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Jason Szep and Richard Chang)

Police seeking man in killing of two homeless men in San Diego

Person of interest in three attacks

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – Police in San Diego on Tuesday were seeking a man possibly connected to the slaying of two homeless men and the wounding of a third over the holiday weekend, officials said.

Police were calling the man a “person of interest” and not a suspect and they provided few details on what connects him to the attacks on the three men.

Witnesses saw the “person of interest” near where the first attack occurred on Saturday, and he was captured on surveillance video inside a local store wearing a backpack, San Diego police Captain David Nisleit said in a phone interview.

In that first attack, the body of a homeless man was discovered on fire between a highway and train tracks in the Mission Bay area of San Diego, police said.

The victim, a 53-year-old man, was pronounced dead at the scene.

On Monday before dawn, a 61-year-old man was discovered bleeding with trauma to his upper body, less than 4 miles (6 km) south of the first attack, police said.

He was rushed to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, and was still listed in critical condition on Tuesday, Nisleit said.

On Monday morning, just over an hour after the discovery of the badly wounded man, a third victim was discovered near some tennis courts in the Ocean Beach neighborhood about 3 miles (5 km) to the west of the second attack, police said.

He had trauma to his upper torso and was already dead when police arrived, said Nisleit, who declined to provide further details on the victim’s injuries. Investigators have not been able to identify the man or establish his exact age, he said.

The names of the other two men have not been released.

All three homeless men appeared to have been sleeping when they were attacked, Nisleit said. A single person is believed to have carried out the two slayings and the wounding of the third victim, he said.

“Obviously this is somebody we want to locate and get out of the community,” Nisleit said.

San Diego police have been warning homeless people about the attacks and are seeking potential tips from them, he said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Bangladeshi police may have killed hostage by mistake

People place flowers at a makeshift memorial near the site, to pay tribute to the victims of the attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery and the O'Kitchen Restaurant, in Dhaka

By Ruma Paul and Rupam Jain

DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladeshi police said on Tuesday one of the men they shot dead during the siege of a Dhaka cafe on the weekend may have been a hostage killed by mistake, while the hunt for accomplices of the gunmen who killed 20 people focused on six suspects.

Police on Tuesday named five Bangladeshi gunmen who stormed the restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic zone late on Friday. Most of the victims in the violence claimed by Islamic State were foreigners, from Italy, Japan, India and the United States.

It was one of the deadliest militant attacks in Bangladesh, where Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed a series of killings of liberals and members of religious minorities in the past year.

The government has dismissed those claims, as it did the Islamic State claim of responsibility for Friday’s attack.

Pictures of five young men clutching guns and grinning in front of a black flag were posted on an Islamic State website hours after the attack, along with the claim of responsibility, but despite that, authorities have ruled out a foreign link.

Police believe that Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), an outlawed domestic group that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, played a significant role in organizing the band of privileged, educated young attackers.

Confusion over exactly how many gunmen were involved was at least partly cleared up on Tuesday when police said among the six people security forces killed when they stormed the building to end a 12-hour stand-off was Saiful Islam Chowkidar, a pizza maker at the Holey Artisan restaurant.

“We killed six people in the restaurant. A case has been registered against five. The sixth man was a restaurant employee,” Saiful Islam, a top police official investigating the attack, told Reuters.

“He may not be involved,” he said, adding that the investigation was going on.

An employee of the cafe, shown a photo of a man killed at the eatery and wearing a chef’s outfit, identified him as Chowkidar, and said he had worked there for 18 months.

Police named five men as attackers in a case filed on Tuesday to allow them to launch official investigations, including questioning families of the militants for clues as to what turned them into killers.

Two other suspects are in hospital.

‘GUIDED’

Police said they were hunting for six members of the JMB who were suspected of organizing the attack.

“Six members of JMB have been shown as accused in the case. We are trying to arrest them because they could be the mastermind,” Islam said.

The JMB has been accused of involvement in many of the killings over the past year and Islam said police were interrogating more than 130 of its members already in custody in the hope of gleaning clues.

“We don’t know who is the mastermind behind the attack. We just know that these boys were guided to launch an attack on the restaurant,” he said.

The five named in the case filing were Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz, Meer Saameh Mubasheer, Khairul Islam and Shafiqul Islam.

The attack marked a major escalation in the scale and brutality of violence aimed at forcing strict Islamic rule in Bangladesh, whose 160 million people are mostly Muslim.

It has shocked the country, as have details emerging about the well-to-do lives of some of the gunmen.

At least three of the gunmen were from wealthy, liberal families who had attended elite Dhaka schools, in contrast to the traditional Bangladeshi militant’s path from poverty and a madrassa education to violence.

Three of the attackers had been missing since the beginning of the year, police have said.

Two had attended a private university in Malaysia, one of whom, Nibras Islam, was not particularly religious, according to a student who played football with him at a private college in Dhaka between 2009 and 2011.

“We are in touch with investigators in Malaysia and they are sharing all the information but as of now we have not found any links with international militant groups,” Islam said.

One of the dead gunmen was from a poor family and had studied at a madrassa and another hailed from a lower-middle class background, said another senior police official who declined to be identified.

(Additional reporting by Aditya Kalra, Serajul Quadir in DHAKA and Rupam Jain and Krishna N. Das in NEW DELHI; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Robert Birsel)