Officers stared down hundreds protesting against police killings near a ramp leading to an interstate in Louisiana’s capital on Sunday night, before another squad in riot gear arrived and authorities took dozens into custody.
Earlier on Sunday, about 2,000 people rallied outside the Capitol building to protest police killings of black people, Louisiana State Police Major Doug Cain said.
“They didn’t have any problems out there. They seemed to be very organized and peaceful,” Cain said.
However, by nightfall a few hundred people aimed for an on-ramp of Interstate 110, trying a tactic protesters were using over the weekend in multiple cities, and after a lengthy standoff, more police in full riot gear moved in, pinning some of the protesters as others fled.
About 30 to 40 people were taken into custody for trying to block a highway, sheriff’s spokeswoman Casey Rayborn Hicks said.
That could push Baton Rouge’s weekend arrest total above 160, with just one reported injury to a police officer.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said he was “very proud” of the law enforcement response to the protests that have followed the fatal shooting of a black man by white police officers in the city.
Flanked by law enforcement leaders, Edwards said he does not believe officers have been overly aggressive by using riot gear to push protesters off a highway.
“The police tactics in response have been very moderate. I’m very proud of that,” said the Democratic governor, who comes from a family of sheriffs.
Tensions between black citizens and police have risen palpably after police shootings of African-American men in Minnesota and Louisiana, and the gunning down of five white police officers by a black suspect in Dallas in apparent retaliation.
Activists said they were dismayed by the police response.
“I remain disappointed in the Baton Rouge police, who continue to provoke protesters for peacefully protesting. There’s a lot of work to be done, with this police department specifically,” said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent Black Lives Matter activist.
A Baton Rouge police spokesman, Sergeant Don Coppola, blamed some violence and the large number of arrests on outside agitators.
One officer lost teeth to a projectile thrown outside police headquarters, while police also confiscated three rifles, three shotguns and two pistols during that protest, he wrote in an e-mail.
Most of those detained live in Louisiana and face a single charge of obstructing a highway, Hicks said.
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