Local Editor
A planned four-day stretch of protests against police violence began in Ferguson in the US state of Missouri on Friday.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside a US police station, chanting against police violence and pushing forward a weekend of demonstrations.
The protests, called the Weekend of Resistance by organizers, began on Friday outside the office of the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Robert P. McCulloch, who has been urged to step aside in the case of a white police officer from Ferguson who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in August.
Protesters carried a mirrored coffin, which they said represented all the victims of police brutality, where they eventually amassed at the Ferguson Police Department.
The organized rallies began at a moment when the St. Louis metropolitan area again found itself in the midst of racial turmoil, after a white off-duty St. Louis police officer killed a black teenager in the city’s Shaw neighborhood on Wednesday night. The police have said the teenager, Vonderrit Myers Jr., opened fire on the unidentified officer, but Myers’s family has insisted that he was unarmed.
Civil rights organizations and protest groups have invited people from around the country to join vigils and marches from Friday to Monday over the August 9 shooting of Brown in the St Louis suburb.
Protesters are calling for the arrest and prosecution of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who shot Brown.
A grand jury has been weighing the evidence to decide whether Wilson should be charged in Brown’s shooting.
Furthermore, Brown’s killing has set off a national uproar over police accountability and race relations.
Source: Al-Ahednews
