More than 1,000 protesters shouted slogans at riot police in St Louis in the early hours of yesterday near the climax of four days of street rallies and sit-ins over the police shootings of two black 18-year-olds.
Many on the night march chanted: “Indict, convict, put the killer cops in jail. The whole damn system is guilty as hell,” in the city where a white off-duty officer shot and killed teenager Vonderrit Myers Jr last week.
Police said the youth had opened fire.
Photo: Reuters
Almost two months to the day earlier, another white officer shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson after what police described as an altercation.
The shootings have focused global attention on the state of race relations in the US and evoked memories of other racially charged cases, including the fatal shooting of black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012.
Officers in riot gear beat their batons on the ground in unison as they faced off against the marchers, before letting them walk peacefully on.
“You make my heart easier,” Myers’ father told the crowd that later gathered in the St Louis University campus and held a four-minute silence.
Hundreds of activists have traveled from across the US to join four days of protests, dubbed “Ferguson October.”
Organizers said the event would culminate in mass rallies later yesterday on “Moral Monday.”
Seventeen people were arrested during weekend protests, St Louis police said.
Early on Sunday morning, about 200 protesters, some wearing masks, made their way to the southern St Louis neighborhood where Myers was killed..
Protesters marched toward a QuickTrip gas station convenience store and tried to force open its doors, St Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said at a news conference.
Police assembled in riot gear and instructed the crowd to disperse, he said.
About 50 of the marchers created a human chain by locking their arms and about half of them heeded the police warning and left.
“The people who were left there were people who made a conscious decision they wanted to be arrested,” he said.
St Louis police spokeswoman Schron Jackson said on Sunday in an e-mail that 17 people were arrested on suspicion of unlawful assembly. There were no reports of injuries or property damage, the e-mail said.
A “direct action” led by local and visiting clergy members was planned for Ferguson and other spots in and around St Louis for yesterday. Protest leaders do not plan to release details until shortly ahead of time to avoid tipping off law enforcement.
“We still are knee-deep in this situation,” Kareem Jackson, a St Louis rap artist and community organizer whose stage name is Tef Poe, said on Saturday. “We have not packed up our bags, we have not gone home. This is not a fly-by-night moment. This is not a made-for-TV revolution. This is real people standing up to a real problem and saying: ‘We ain’t taking it no more.’”
Two months after Brown’s death sparked an initial wave of violent riots and led Missouri Governor Jay Nixon to summon the National Guard, the highly organized weekend brought many newcomers to St Louis.
A crowd that organizers estimated at 3,000 marched peacefully through downtown St Louis on Saturday to protest Brown’s death and other fatal police shootings of black males in the St Louis area and nationwide. No arrests were reported on Saturday.
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