Police agencies on edge, on guard amid heightened threats

Black Lives Matter Cincinnati, planning to hold a march Sunday in downtown Cincinnati, called the deaths of five Dallas officers “a sad and unfortunate circumstance” and criticized those “sniffing for a link” between the movement and the killings. In Dallas, officers swarmed police department headquarters Saturday after a report of a suspicious person in a garage before finally issuing an all-clear.

They wept, held signs and chanted, “Black Lives Matter”.

Other protests since have been, broadly speaking, peaceful, though there have been concerns about an excessive number of arrests in some cities, particularly Baton Rouge.

Mawuli Davis, an African-American attorney and activist in Atlanta, said the unrest continues because there has been no serious dialogue about issues of race and policing. Black Americans were expressing their frustrations with racism and their lack of economic opportunity – over their sense that the civil rights movement had, despite progress, failed to fulfill its promises.

“In the last couple of years we’ve seen this violence become an ever-present reality in our lives”, Lenz said.

About 400 people covered a city block as marchers moved across a large area of northwest Washington and headed toward the Georgetown neighborhood late in the night.

Hundreds of people have gathered for a Black Lives Matter rally in Cincinnati following the fatal shootings of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota in the past week.

We organize disciplined mass actions to bring the weight of the majority to bear in our struggle for justice.

A black protester said that there was a lot more to be concerned about in America for black citizens than foreign-born terrorism. The group protests only the use of excessive police violence against the black population, a demand which should be uncontroversial.

On Saturday night, activist and reporter Deray McKesson was arrested during a protest in Baton Rouge. No one was injured, he added.

The groups listened to various speakers who all wanted to focus attention on a series of deadly police confrontations.

Dallas Police Detective Albert Sanchez also spoke on the need for unity. They formed a human shield to block protesters from doing so.

It led to a tense standoff between police and protesters as several stood directly in front of the officers raising both hands in the “Don’t shoot” gesture, as shown in affiliate video. Police arrested three for throwing rocks. As at least one commentator – Patrick Martin – has asked: why could the same method not be used – if it had to be used at all – to deliver teargas, if the police’s intention was not to serve as judge, jury and executioner?

Reaction against the cold-blooded, entirely unjustifiable targeting of law enforcement officers should not drown out outrage against the seemingly endless string of killings of black people at the hands of police. Critics of police racism in the United States have often pointed to Dallas as a model where the police are said to believe in community engagement rather than violence.

He also cited the presence of an apparently legally owned gun in the vehicle where motorist Philando Castile was shot dead during a traffic stop in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota. Many of these riots were precipitated by encounters between black residents and police.