Police Near St. Louis Kill Teen, Setting off New Protest Round

By Toluse Olorunnipa

Photographer: St. Louis Post-Dispatch/David Carson/AP Photo

Police try to control a crowd on the lot of a gas station following a shooting Tuesday... Read More

A police officer shot and killed a man in a St. Louis suburb late yesterday, setting off a new round of protests near Ferguson, where an August shooting sparked unrest over law-enforcement tactics that’s spread across the U.S.
St. Louis County police say the man was shot after pointing a handgun at an officer from the Berkeley, Missouri, force. The man wasn’t named by police but was identified as Antonio Martin, 18, by his mother, Toni Martin, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on its website.
Protesters gathered at the scene following a call for demonstrators over social media by activists who led nightly events in Ferguson after black 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot to death by a white police officer on Aug. 9.
“A lot like August,” tweeted Johnetta Elzie, a 25-year-old activist from St. Louis who organized protests in Ferguson.
Police, some assembled in riot gear, arrested protesters while images on social media showed broken windows at a nearby gas station. Brian Schellman, a spokesman for the St. Louis County police, said he didn’t have information on the number of arrests made or
if there had been any injuries.
Deadly police encounters have inflamed anger nationwide over what activists call inequities in the criminal justice system. Looting and arson followed a Missouri grand jury’s decision Nov. 24 not to indict a Ferguson police officer in the Brown shooting.

Photographer: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, David Carson/AP Photo

Police photograph a gun on the ground Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2014, following a shooting... Read More

Routine Check

Thousands have rallied in New York, Washington and other cities since the Dec. 3 decision in the Staten Island case of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father of six whose death while being held in a police chokehold was recorded on video.
Last night, demonstrators marched on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue against heavy-handed police tactics, defying a request by Mayor Bill de Blasio to temporarily halt protests after two officers were shot execution-style on Dec. 20 in Brooklyn by a man authorities say had alluded to the Brown and Garner cases on social media and attended a New York protest.
The man killed in last night’s incident was one of two people approached during a routine business check at a gas station, St. Louis County police said in a statement.
The officer, who was not named, fired several shots after fearing for his life, according to the police statement. The second man fled and the case remains under investigation.
“The wound was reopened tonight,” DeRay McKesson, another protest organizer, said on Twitter.