A march outside Baton Rouge police headquarters early Saturday morning led to a confrontation that flirted with violence and ended with officers retreating amid protesters’ taunts.
At one point an officer drew his weapon as he tried to break up a human chain that had formed on Airline Highway. But as the rally returned to a gas station down the street, officers were ordered to back down. Roughly 100 protesters celebrated as police watched in grim silence. Thirty-one arrests were reported.
The chaotic scene signaled not only rising tensions in Baton Rouge but a generational shift in how young African-Americans are dealing with the death of Alton Sterling, fatally shot by police early Tuesday morning as he sold CD’s outside a convenience store, as he had done virtually every day for seven years. Police say he had a gun, but family members say they don’t believe Sterling was armed.
“They’re restless. They’re angry. They’re irritated,” said Tammara Crawford, 30, of the protesters. She was serving free pizza and sub sandwiches to protesters outside the Triple S Food Mart, where Sterling, 37, was killed.
There, the atmosphere was more like a “homecoming,” said Lakeisha Ford, who knew Sterling for most of his life. “We celebrate life down here.”
Baton Rouge police were nowhere to be seen as hundreds of people milled outside the convenience store.
“If they came down here there would be trouble,” Ford said.
Friday’s protests unfolded amid a warning from the FBI’s New Orleans Field Division that “multiple groups are calling for or planning riots and/or violence against law enforcement” in Baton Rouge.
Baton Rouge police would not say if any of the protesters they detained were arrested or eventually released.
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