A police officer shot and killed a Black man after the two had a lengthy “struggle” at an apartment complex in Baton Rouge on Monday night, the Advocate reported. Authorities didn’t immediately identify the victim, but the name “Calvin Toney” quickly surfaced online as being the person who was shot.
When Black Lives Matter activist Deray McKesson tweeted Toney’s name early Tuesday morning, others quickly joined in condemning the Baton Rouge Police Department killing “another Black man.”
The officer, who was reportedly also a Black man, was with a child and family services worker to check on the welfare of a child at the location when the victim and the officer got into a fight lasting “many minutes,” East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore III told reporters.
Frustration was clear among local residents, who quickly formed a crowd at the scene with chants of “Black lives matter” and “no justice, no peace” breaking out at times, the Associated Press reported.
Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, who is also Black, issued a brief statement to urge residents to be calm while she was “monitoring” the “officer-involved shooting.”
One woman yelled out of anger at police, according to the Advocate, in what was the latest display of heightened tensions between the community and law enforcement in Baton Rouge.
“One black man down,” the woman screamed. “One black man down. I hope y’all sleep good tonight. … He’s gone. What the f*** y’all investigating?”
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/930284204214181891
The shooting came more than a year after video footage of the police shooting of Alton Sterling, also a Black man, sparked outrage and protests in Baton Rouge, which is 45 percent Black. Less than two weeks after Sterling was killed during the summer of 2016, three Baton Rouge police officers were shot to death when a gunman ambushed them. That followed an FBI warning about “threats to law enforcement and potential threats to the safety of the general public” because of Sterling’s killing.
Sterling’s case could very well be a precedent in the one that will probably follow Monday night’s shooting, as the officer on trial was acquitted in May.
This is a developing story.
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Who Is Calvin Toney? Baton Rouge Police Shoot And Kill Black Man was originally published on newsone.com
