BATON ROUGE — Seven people were arrested outside of Baton Rouge Police headquarters today as marchers became “disruptive” during a protest to mark the one-year anniversary of Alton Sterling’s death, according to WBRZ.
Baton Rouge Police told WBRZ that the seven protesters who were arrested are members of the New Black Panther Party. They did not have a permit to protest, and they tried to burst through a barricade.
Video posted on Twitter by a reporter with The Advocate shows both officers and a protester holding tasers, with graphic language as the situation escalates and marchers get thrown to the ground.
Sterling was shot and killed outside a Baton Rouge convenience store just after midnight July 5, 2016. Police said they were called to the store in response to a man threatening someone with a gun. Sterling was known as the “CD man” and sold CDs outside of the same convenience store for years.
Police said Sterling resisted arrest and didn’t respond when officers used a Taser on him, but video that surfaced after the shooting shows Sterling was pinned down by the officers. Sterling was shot six times in the chest and back.
His death, along with the shooting death of Philando Castile by a police officer in Minnesota the next day, sparked nationwide protests and activism by the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
The U.S. Justice Department investigated the case for possible federal civil rights violations, but it announced in May that it would not be filing criminal charges against Baton Rouge officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake, the two police officers who shot and killed Sterling.
