Rallies swept the country overnight with police in places facing off against protesters disturbed by recent police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
The protests in at least 18 cities were similar to the Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas on Thursday that launched the latest incidence of racial violence, when a gunman shot a dozen police officers, killing five.
Demonstrators took to the streets Friday night in Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, New York, Omaha, Detroit, New Orleans, Rochester, N.Y., Baton Rouge, La., Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, San Francisco, Sacramento, Phoenix and Little Rock, Ark.
In California, the largest of several demonstrations was in downtown San Francisco, where an estimated 1,000 marchers gathered. A smaller demonstration was held at the Huntington Beach Pier.
More than 200 people on Friday gathered outside the state Capitol in Sacramento for a small but passionate Black Lives Matter rally. All of the California protests were peaceful.
The demonstrations continued again Saturday in Dallas, where several organizers of Thursday’s fateful rally came to the memorial in front of police headquarters to pay their respects.
As four black community organizers were surveying the piles of homemade sympathy cards, flowers and other tributes, a white man confronted them, shouting and cursing.
He condemned them for “smiling and taking pictures in front of this,” as the crowd of several dozen people on the bustling street corner looked on, stunned.
The organizers backed away a bit, and the man left.
“There was nothing for us to say to him,” said a member of the group, Dominique Torres, an attorney for the Dallas-based nonprofit group Next Generation Action Network, which organized Thursday’s protest. “To engage with someone who is that angry at that moment … it was best for us to allow the people who were with him to take him away.”
Torres said she wanted those who blame protesters for the police officers’ deaths to remember that they had gathered peacefully, that they worked with police to organize the rally and that the gunman was not affiliated with their cause.
“We want them to know we were exercising our constitutional right,” she said.
“We are deeply sorry. This was not part of our movement. This was a lone actor that did not share the same thoughts and actions we cherish as an organization.”
In the demonstrations that occurred across the country Friday night, protesters and police in some places stood side by side without clashing. But in others, conflict erupted.
In Atlanta, a crowd of about 2,000 people blocked a downtown interstate ramp during a march organized by the NAACP that resulted in two arrests by the Georgia State Patrol.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed attended the march and told protesters he respected their right to demonstrate.
“We’re respecting their 1st Amendment rights. We’re the home of Dr. Martin Luther King. The only thing I ask is that they not take the freeways,” Reed told reporters at the scene. “Dr. King would never take a freeway.”
In Phoenix, police in riot gear used pepper spray and fired bean bags at hundreds of protesters to prevent them from blocking ramps to Interstate 10. Some protesters hurled rocks at police, according to the Arizona Republic and other reporters on scene.
The crowd eventually dwindled, and three arrests were reported.
In Rochester, N.Y., a similar protest that drew about 400 people ended with 40 arrests late Friday, including two television reporters who said they were handcuffed and detained for leaving a sidewalk to cover the rally.
Rochester Police Chief Michael Ciminelli on Saturday defended the decision to arrest protesters, saying the gathering, which had blocked a downtown intersection, became a danger to public safety. Nearly all the city’s police resources, plus dozens of officers from elsewhere in upstate New York, were needed to secure the crowd, he said.
Rochester Mayor Lovely A. Warren said at a news conference that the standoff ended without injuries, property damage or officers deploying pepper spray or other weapons.
“We did many things right,” she said, according to the New York Upstate news website.
But the arrests of two African American reporters from local WHAM-TV drew a strong reaction from the station’s general manager, Chuck Samuels.
“Outrageous for RPD to handcuff two African American @13wham reporters for doing their jobs covering protests,” he tweeted.
Carlet Cleare, one of the reporters detained by police, tweeted that she “Was never told I wasn’t supposed to be on sidewalk” and added, “Both Rochester’s mayor & police chief apologized today to Justin & I for our brief detainment. I appreciate that.”
The protests were sparked by the deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn., black men whose shootings by police were captured on video that quickly provoked outrage among national leaders and resulted in the launching of federal investigations.
Late Friday, protesters gathered for a silent vigil in Minneapolis.
In Baton Rouge, protesters assembled outside police headquarters, where officers stood guard, some in riot gear, and also at the convenience store where Sterling was shot earlier this week.
Castile’s mother and two of his uncles late Friday condemned the Dallas shooting of police officers, saying Castile would not have approved. In an interview with CNN, Valerie Castile said her son “believed that all lives matter.”
At the scene of the tributes to the slain officers in Dallas, Torres said her group in the course of past rallies has developed relationships with local police.
“Just because we are anti-police brutality does not mean we are anti-police,” she said.
Her group plans to give sympathy cards to Dallas police and Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) to deliver to the families of officers who were shot.
“We do want to make sure they understand that we grieve for them,” Torres said. “There are a range of different emotions going on, but at the end of the day, people have lost their lives: Here in Dallas, Baton Rouge, in Minnesota, in all parts of this country.”
Torres said she hopes police grieving the fallen officers can work with those who have lost loved ones at the hands of police, instead of meeting protests with riot gear and pepper spray as they did overnight.
“When we’re able to come together and to speak about how we feel as a community, I don’t think it should always be met with riot gear. Police across the nation are very vulnerable right now. But that’s also something minorities around the country have been feeling for a long time,” Torres said. “We need to come together around the table so that we can come up with better policies for policing and in our communities, how we feel about police and interact and engage with them.”
Follow @mollyhf on Twitter.
UPDATES:
11:46 a.m.: The article was updated with details of a confrontation at the scene of tributes to fallen police officers in Dallas.
This article was originally published at 11:12 a.m.
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