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Black Lives Matter activist arrested at Baton Rouge protest

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Police arrest activist DeRay McKesson during a protest along Airline Highway, a major road that passes in front of the Baton Rouge Police Department headquarters.

BATON ROUGE, La. >> A prominent Black Lives Matter activist was one of several people arrested Saturday night during an often-tense protest in Louisiana that included a contingent of hundreds of people who took to the streets to call for justice and voice anger over the fatal shooting of a black man by two white police officers.

Demonstrators gathered at the convenience store where 37-year-old Alton Sterling was shot before fanning out to the Baton Rouge police department and the state Capitol for another day of demonstrations.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota police used smoke bombs to clear demonstrators who blocked Interstate 94 in St. Paul late Saturday night and gathered to voice their growing concern about Sterling’s death and the fatal police shooting on Wednesday of Philando Castile in suburban St. Paul.

The gatherings in Baton Rouge came after overnight demonstrations produced tense moments resulting in 30 arrests. The demonstration Saturday outside the Baton Rouge Police Department was at times tense again, as protesters faced off against police dressed in riot gear.

The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Sterling’s death, which has angered many in the black community.

Shouting “No justice! No peace!” roughly 1,000 protesters gathered outside the police department, waving homemade signs as passing cars honked their support. Some drivers stopped by with bottles of water.

The protests lasted well into the evening but died down a little after midnight.

Police in riot gear came out numerous times as the demonstration wore on into the evening, facing off against the crowd that yelled slogans and waved signs. At one point early in the protest, a police officer on a microphone told the crowd that as long as they stayed on the grass and not on the road they could remain, and then police eventually pulled back and traffic reopened. But officers came out again after the demonstration moved to a different area of the street. At one point numerous police cars, with their blue lights flashing, sped off down the street where a smaller group of protesters had walked.

A police spokesman said two firearms were confiscated and several arrests made. Authorities said they pulled in officers from nearby parishes to buttress their numbers.

DeRay Mckesson was among those arrested Saturday night, according to an Associated Press reporter who was at the scene. It was not immediately clear what prompted Mckesson’s arrest. Video posted on Periscope shows footage taken by McKesson in the moments leading up to his arrest. The video shows Mckesson walking alongside Airline Highway on his way back to the main area where the protests were going on when he was arrested.

On the video, Mckesson can be heard talking with fellow protesters and describing what he said was provocative police behavior against protesters.

“The police in Baton Rouge have been truly awful tonight,” Mckesson said on the video. “They have provoked people, they chase people just for kicks. The police have been violent tonight. The protesters have not.”

Moments later, someone shouts, “This is the police, you’re under arrest! Don’t fight me! Don’t fight me!”

McKesson responds: “I’m under arrest, y’all!” before the camera is knocked to the ground.

Photo images captured by The Associated Press show police apprehending Mckesson, who at one point was on his knees before being pulled to his feet by police and led away with his hands secured behind his back.

Mckesson is one of the most recognizable faces to emerge from the Black Lives Matter movement. The former educator built a national following after he left his then-home and job in Minneapolis in August 2014 for Ferguson, Missouri, to document the rising anger over race relations after the police shooting of Michael Brown.

The local public radio station, WWNO, said on Twitter that one of their reporters was also arrested, and that they had little information on why.

Jade Flint was one of the protesters out on the street late Saturday.

“I feel if I’m not out here ‘Who is?’ This is stuff that I talk about daily with my friends and on Twitter. I can’t say that I feel a certain way about a cause and not have my body out here representing for the community,” said Flint. She said she would like to see the two officers involved in Sterling’s death arrested.

Baton Rouge resident Marie Flowers came to the protest with her three children. She said people in the north Baton Rouge neighborhood where the shooting happened are frustrated.

Pointing to the crowds shouting along a fence surrounding the police department she said: “To me, this is just a snapshot of north Baton Rouge and how frustrated they are. They are so frustrated with this bull crap.”

At one point, she gestured to her 12-year-old son and said they were there to protect men like him.

“Black boys are being killed and this is just the culmination of what has been going on for decades,” Flowers said.

Lael Montgomery of Baton Rouge was at the convenience store where Sterling was shot.

“I’ve been in active in the community for years. We have been suffering police brutality for a long time. A lot of racism has been going on here for a long time,” he said. “I have kids. They need to be raised in a better environment than they’re in.”

Members of the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense called for the arrest and indictment of the officers involved in Sterling’s shooting, shouting “Black Power” and raising their fists.

“These are human rights violations,” Krystal Muhammad shouted to the crowd at the convenience store before heading over to the police department. “They are not operating as human beings. They are being predators on our communities across America.”

Montgomery said he didn’t want protesters to go to the police station, saying he knows that police are on edge following the Thursday shooting deaths of five officers in Dallas.

Those safety concerns were also on the mind of Baton Rouge resident Eugene Collins, also at the convenience store. He said he was at the demonstrations Friday as well to help keep demonstrators away from police.

“We don’t need to go around here tearing up our communities. We don’t want young people getting arrested. We don’t want anyone getting arrested. And we definitely don’t want any of these folks tear gassed, stun gunned or getting shot in the process. Peace is the most important,” he said.

Baton Rouge police said in a written statement they are investigating a newspaper website’s video that appears to show an officer with his weapon temporarily drawn at one point early Saturday morning as angry protesters confronted police.

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11 responses to “Black Lives Matter activist arrested at Baton Rouge protest”

  1. LittleEarl_01 says:

    Maybe Mckesson should be protesting blacks killing blacks hourly in places like Chicago, New York, LA.

    • lespark says:

      If these people had jobs instead of welfare they wouldn’t have time. They’d be at home or work enjoying the American way of life. All the jobs went Overseas. Those Countries have pulled themselves up and are enjoying relative prosperity. America is going in the opposite direction, and fast. Come November who ever you vote for will be very important.

      • cojef says:

        Mean while hedge-funds managers are garnering the benefits from the funds invested abroad.

      • pohaku96744 says:

        have to agree with you, we are looking like 3rd world country. I see lots of Chinese at the airport, rich ones and middle class ones, can tell by the way they dress and yell at you. Middle class coming to Hawaii to me is an indication of their prosperity. They have to thank Walmart.

        • Shotzy says:

          You are so correct in saying who you vote for in November is really important. If you listen to the current regime, everything is peaches and cream in the good ole USA. Why minorities continue to support the Democratic party after years and years of being held down is baffling. Getting something for nothing does not help individuals or family’s in the long run. It creates dependence and complicity. A strong job market with fair wages and taxation would do wonders for this Country.

    • tigerwarrior says:

      Whites kill whites hourly in states such as Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Florida and California. So what’s your point? I believe the point many of these protesters have is: Despite the fact that whites kill more whites than black people kill blacks here in the U.S., why are black Americans three times as likely as white Americans to be killed by police. Thus the protests. And besides, according to 2014 FBI statistics, while it is true that 90% of the murders committed by black individuals involve black victims, 82.4% of the murders committed by white individuals involve white victims. So this renders the black-killing-black argument moot.

      • Cricket_Amos says:

        “Despite the fact that whites kill more whites than black people kill blacks”

        The simple numbers are misleading. You have to normalize for percentage of the population.

        For example, if you have 3 whites for every black, then the killer rate would be equal if there were 3 times as many white killers as there were black killers.

        I’m not sure if you took this into account.

      • kekelaward says:

        Blacks only make up 13% of the population, so it makes sense that more whites would die as there are more of them.

        • allie says:

          agree. The truth is, blacks commit serious crimes in far greater percentages than whites, Latinos, Hawaiians, Asian-Americans, etc. Yet they refuse to connect that with greater rates of police arrests in their community or police nervousness when approaching black drivers reaching for their pockets.

  2. Shotzy says:

    Here is some statistics, real numbers that tell a quite different story than what BLM, the media ans our sitting President would have you believe. “Quote” ; [if we’re going to talk about race and policing, let’s talk about cop killings. Over the last decade, black males made up 40 percent of all cop killers, even though they’re six percent of the population. It turns out, that a police officer is 18-and-a-half times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is likely to be killed by a police officer.] Now, why isn’t the facts being told ? It is to push the liberal narrative about it being the fault of Guns, The Tea Party and Conservatives, That’s Why ! BTW: those numbers were gathered and published in a new book from Heather McDonald titled “The War on Cops”

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