Angry protesters face off with riot police in St. Louis over shooting of 18-year-old

Oct. 9, 2014: Protesters lock arms as they block a street a day after Vonderrit D. Myers was shot and killed by white, off-duty St. Louis police officer in St. Louis (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

ST. LOUIS –  Protesters angered by the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old by police faced off with officers in south St. Louis for a second night as accusations of racial profiling prompted calls for a federal investigation ahead of a weekend of planned peaceful rallies.

State and city leaders have urged the Justice Department to investigate the death of Vonderrit D. Myers in the Shaw neighborhood Wednesday night, fearing he was targeted because he was black. Police say the white officer who killed Myers was returning fire, but Myers’ parents say he was unarmed.

“This here was racial profiling turned deadly,” state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, a St. Louis Democrat, said at a news conference Thursday.

Myers’ death comes two months after the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a black unarmed 18-year-old, by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson. Brown’s killing sparked dozens of often violent protests in the St. Louis suburb. A state grand jury is deciding whether Officer Darren Wilson will face charges in his death.

Late Thursday night following a quiet candlelight prayer vigil for Myers, hundreds of people joined a more rowdy gathering in Shaw to protest his death.

Police in riot gear lined up on a high street, flanked by brand name stores and restaurants. Protesters yelled abuse and profanities to taunt the officers, who silently stood their ground. Police helicopters buzzed above the neighborhood. Officers used pepper spray to force the crowd back.

Some protesters burned the American flag, while others banged on drums and shouted “This is what democracy looks like!” Some slammed the sides of police vans. Broken glass littered the street.

Eventually the protesters backed off, moving a couple of blocks away. Riot police remained in the area.

Activists and other protesters from around the country have been preparing for four days of rallies, marches and protests over the Ferguson shooting. Organizers say the events, which start Friday and include a march Saturday in downtown St. Louis, have taken on added urgency in the wake of Myers’ death.

“This is a racial powder keg,” said Jerryl Christmas, a St. Louis attorney who was among more than 20 black leaders who joined Nasheed at a news conference Thursday outside police headquarters. “All this is going to do is escalate the situation.”

Police say Myers was both armed and aggressive, using a stolen 9 mm gun to shoot at the officer.

Syreeta Myers said her son was holding a sandwich, not a gun. “Police lie. They lied about Michael Brown, too,” she told The Associated Press by phone Thursday.

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said the officer spotted Myers and two other males around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday while working a security job and patrolling a neighborhood near the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Dotson said the officer, who was off-duty but wearing his uniform, became suspicious when one of them started to run.

He chased them, first in his car and then on foot, Dotson said.

During the chase, he got into a physical altercation with Myers, who ran up a hill, turned and fired at the officer, the chief said. The officer, who wasn’t hurt, shot back.

Ballistic evidence shows Myers fired three shots before his gun jammed, Dotson said. Police said they recovered the 9 mm gun, which was reported stolen on Sept. 26.

The officer fired off 17 rounds. Preliminary autopsy results show a shot to the head killed Myers, according to medical examiner Dr. Michael Graham.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Graham said Myers was shot six or seven times in the lower extremities and the fatal shot entered his right cheek.

Authorities have not released the name of the six-year veteran of the St. Louis Police Department. The 32-year-old officer is on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.

An attorney for the officer told the newspaper that his client served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq and was “shaken up” by the incident. He called claims that Myers was carrying a sandwich not a gun “ridiculous.”

Online court documents show Myers was free on bond when he was killed. He had been charged with unlawful use of a weapon, a felony, and misdemeanor resisting arrest in June.

Myers’ was the third fatal shooting of a black male by St. Louis-area police since Brown’s death.

“It’s imperative that we began to heal this community,” Nasheed said. “This community has been broken down. We have too many deaths at the hands of police officers.”

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Angry protesters face off with riot police in St. Louis over shooting of 18-year-old

Hong Kong protesters prepare for more clashes

Monday, September 29, 2014 | 11:31 AM    

HONG KONG, (AFP) – The ranks of Hong Kong democracy protesters who have paralysed parts of the city swelled into their tens of thousands Monday, digging in for another night of confrontation with police in their campaign for free elections.

The protesters defied government calls to go home, a day after chaotic scenes saw riot police fire tear gas in running battles with angry crowds in one of the biggest ever challenges to Beijing’s rule of the semi-autonomous city.

As night fell, thousands of demonstrators who have blocked off a major highway turned on the torches on their mobile phones, turning the Admiralty business district into a sea of lights.

Some of those swelling the crowds on Monday said they had been horrified to see police using tear gas on the protesters — many of whom are students — and came to voice their disgust.

“We don’t know how the police could do that,” teacher Shum Yuen-ping said.

“We want to have our own democracy, and we came to provide our students with support.”

The demonstrators are furious over China’s refusal to grant free elections for the city’s next leader in 2017, insisting that it will vet the candidates in a decision that critics brand a “fake democracy”.

Public anger over rampant inequality is also at its highest in years in a world financial hub once renowned for its stability.

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Hong Kong protesters prepare for more clashes

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong undeterred by tear gas, barricades - VIDEO: Hong Kong protests for democracy

HONG KONG –  Hong Kong’s police on Monday defended their use of tear gas and other tactics to control protests that have paralyzed the city’s financial district, appealing to the thousands gathered to demand more democracy to stop the unprecedented mass act of civil disobedience for the sake of safety and stability.

The employment of tear gas appeared to have backfired, judging from the growing crowds Monday as people finished work and joined weary-looking students camped on major roads near the city’s government headquarters and in several other parts of Hong Kong.

“The students are protecting the right to vote, for Hong Kong’s future. We are not scared, we are not frightened, we just fight for it,” said Carol Chan, a 55-year-old civil service employee who took two days off to join the protests after becoming incensed over police use of tear gas on Sunday.

Instead of candlelight, a few hundred people staged a brief “mobile light” protest on Monday night, raising their mobile phones with their screens glowing into the air. One person chanted the name of the city’s unpopular leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, while the others responded with “Resign. Resign.”

Signaling it doesn’t expect a quick end to the demonstrations, the government announced it was canceling a fireworks display planned for Oct. 1 National Day celebrations.

In a shift of tactics Monday, uniformed police manned barricades and looked on, preventing access to some buildings, but otherwise not intervening.

Police said they used 87 rounds of tear gas on Sunday in what they said was a necessary but restrained response to protesters’ efforts to push through cordons and barricades. They said 41 people were injured, including 12 police officers.

“Police cordon lines were heavily charged, by some violent protesters. So police had to use the minimum force in order to separate the distance at that moment between the protesters and also the police,” Cheung Tak-keung, the assistant police commissioner for operations, told reporters Monday.

Protesters donned rain capes, surgical masks and goggles, wrapped their heads and glasses in plastic and used umbrellas to shield themselves from the searing clouds of tear gas unleashed by police on Sunday. Each time they fled, but returned in defiance. Late Sunday, riot police withdrew and Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, issued a public appeal for everyone to go home and stop blocking traffic.

Across Victoria Harbor, in crowded Kowloon, crowds blocked a major intersection, as young people climbed atop subway station exits and activists rallied the crowds.

The crowds were constantly shifting, as people moved in and out of the sit-ins, some bringing in food and drink while others fetched their own.

“It’s already the fourth day, so it’s really tiring,” said Ching-ching Tse, a 24-year-old student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Tse, wearing cotton gloves, said she was on her second day of picking up trash in the protest area with her friends. “So we are forming some groups and hope we can do some shifts and take turns.”

While many Hong Kong residents support the calls for greater democracy — dubbed the “umbrella revolution” by some although the crowds’ demands fall far short of revolution — the unrest worries others.

“I strongly disagree with the protesters,” said an older woman who gave only her surname, Chan. “Those of us who came to the city 60 or 70 years ago had nothing and we worked and suffered so much to make Hong Kong the rich city it is today. And now the protesters have made our society unstable. For me, being able to eat and sleep is already a luxury. I don’t need democracy. What does it mean?”

Many younger Hong Kong residents have much higher expectations. Raised in an era of plenty and with no experience of the political turmoil of past decades in mainland China, they are demanding universal suffrage and protesting Beijing’s decision last month that candidates in the city’s first-ever election for the top leader must be hand-picked by a committee of mostly pro-Beijing tycoons, a move many residents of the former British colony view as reneging on promises to allow greater democracy in the semi-autonomous territory.

China has called the protests illegal and endorsed the Hong Kong government’s efforts to quell the demonstrations, which are undermining the city’s image as a safe financial haven. Beijing has taken a hard line against a variety of threats to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, including clamping down on dissidents and Muslim Uighur separatists in the country’s far west.

The Hong Kong authorities’ efforts to shut down the protest so far have backfired, said Steve Tsang, a senior fellow at the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute.

“People are feeling a kind of guilt that they were allowing the young kids in their late teens and early 20s to take all the risks, so people are coming out to support them. That’s what we are seeing on the ground,” he said.

While Hong Kong was under British rule, its leader was chosen by London in an arrangement that faced virtually no opposition. After China took control from the British in 1997, it agreed to a policy of “one country, two systems” that allowed the city a high degree of control over its own affairs and kept in place liberties unseen on the mainland. It also promised the city’s leader would eventually be chosen through “universal suffrage,” a pledge that Hong Kongers now say Beijing is failing to keep.

The protests began a week ago with a class boycott by university and college students, who said they would stand firm until officials meet their demands for reforming the local legislature and withdrawing the requirement that election candidates be screened.

Leaders of the broader Occupy Central civil disobedience movement joined them early Sunday, saying they wanted to kick-start a long-threatened mass sit-in demanding Hong Kong’s top leader be elected without Beijing’s interference.

Occupy Central issued a statement Monday urging Leung to resign and saying his “non-response to the people’s demands has driven Hong Kong into a crisis of disorder.” It said the protest is now “a spontaneous movement” of all Hong Kong people.

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Thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong undeterred by tear gas, barricades - VIDEO: Hong Kong protests for democracy

VIDEO: Protesters occupy HK financial centre

Thousands of protesters are occupying the heart of Hong Kong’s financial centre as part of a mass civil disobedience campaign.

The Occupy Central movement had planned to block the heart of Hong Kong’s financial district from Wednesday but brought their demonstration forward.

Students and activists oppose Beijing’s decision to rule out fully democratic elections in Hong Kong in 2017.

Juliana Liu reports from Hong Kong.

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VIDEO: Protesters occupy HK financial centre