A protest over deadly police shootings turned from peaceful into “mayhem,” Albuquerque’s mayor said late on Sunday, as officers in riot gear clashed with demonstrators.
People are angry over the involvement of Albuquerque police officers in 37 shootings, 23 of them fatal, since 2010. Critics say that is far too many for a police department serving a city of about 555,000.
The US Department of Justice has been investigating the department for more than a year, looking into complaints of civil rights violations and allegations of excessive use of force.
Alexander Siderits, 23, said he was participating because he was “fed up” with how police treat citizens.
“It has reached a boiling point, and people just can’t take it anymore,” he said.
A reporter saw gas canisters being thrown, and Albuquerque police and Bernalillo County, New Mexico, sheriff’s deputies charging at the crowds, which had mostly dispersed by late Sunday.
Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry said one police officer was injured, and at one point protesters trapped officers in a vehicle and tried to break the windows, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
Berry did not know of any arrests, and multiple messages left for the police department were not immediately returned.
Video footage by a local news station showed people being led away in restraints, but it was unclear whether those people were arrested.
The gathering came days after a YouTube video emerged threatening retaliation for a recent deadly police shooting.
The video, which bore the logo of the activist collective Anonymous, warned of a cyberattack on Albuquerque city Web sites and called for the protest march. Albuquerque police said their site had been breached on Sunday afternoon and police spokesman Simon Drobik confirmed that the disruption was due to a cyberattack.
In the shooting on March 16 that led to the YouTube posting, a homeless man was killed on the east side of Albuquerque. The shooting followed a long standoff and was captured on video.
The FBI has opened an investigation into the shooting.
Last week, Albuquerque police fatally shot a man at a public housing complex. Authorities said he shot at officers before they returned fire.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema