2 officers shot amid fury over US race case

LOUISVILLE－Two police officers were shot and wounded late on Wednesday in Louisville, Kentucky, in protests that erupted after a grand jury decided that no officers would be charged with causing the death of hospital worker Breonna Taylor in a March police shooting.

The decision, coming in the midst of months of demonstrations over police violence against African Americans, was decried by civil rights activists as a miscarriage of justice.

The grand jury decided that none of the three white officers involved in a deadly police raid on Taylor's apartment would be charged for causing the black woman's death. However, one officer was indicted on charges of endangering her neighbors.

The indictment came more than six months after Taylor, 26, an emergency medical technician and aspiring nurse, was killed in front of her armed boyfriend after the three officers forced their way into her home with a search warrant in a drug trafficking investigation.

Her death became a symbol, and her image a familiar sight, during the months of daily protests against racial injustice and police brutality in cities across the United States.

Following the grand jury announcement, protesters immediately took to the streets of Kentucky's largest city and marched for hours chanting, "No lives matter until Black lives matter", amid sporadic clashes with police in riot gear.

The demonstrations remained mostly peaceful until several gunshots rang out as heavily armed police closed in on a throng of protesters at nightfall, ordering the crowd to disperse about half an hour before a 9 pm curfew was due to go into effect.

Two officers were shot and wounded, said Robert Schroeder, interim Louisville Metropolitan Police chief.

One suspect was arrested, and the two wounded officers were in stable condition－one undergoing surgery－with non-life-threatening injuries, Schroeder said. He gave no further details.

Earlier in the day about a dozen people were arrested in a skirmish between hundreds of demonstrators and a group of law enforcement officers in the Highlands neighborhood outside downtown Louisville. Some windows of nearby businesses were also broken. The crowds largely dissipated after Wednesday night's shooting. Police said 127 arrests were made in all.

Protests elsewhere

Sympathy protests of varying sizes also were held in several other cities on Wednesday, including New York, Washington, Atlanta, and Chicago.

Police in Portland, Oregon, declared a riot late on Wednesday after protesters damaged a police building in unrest that followed the grand jury's decision.

"To those who have gathered-outside of Central Precinct on Southwest 2nd Avenue. This gathering has been declared a riot," the police force said in a tweet. The crowd was told to vacate or face tear gas, other crowd control agents or arrest.

In announcing the grand jury's conclusions, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said the panel had declined to bring any charges against two of the three white policemen who fired into Taylor's apartment on March 13.

The two officers, Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, were found to have been justified under Kentucky law in returning fire after Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot at them, wounding Mattingly in the thigh, Cameron said.

Walker has contended he believed intruders were breaking into Taylor's home and that the couple did not hear police announce their arrival, contrary to the account of the officers and a neighbor.

The third officer, former detective Brett Hankison, was indicted on three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree, an offense that ranks at the lowest level of felony crimes in Kentucky and carries a prison sentence of up to five years.

Benjamin Crump, a prominent civil rights lawyer representing the Taylor family, denounced the outcome of the grand jury probe, saying it was "outrageous" that none of the three officers involved in the raid was criminally charged with causing Taylor's death.

Agencies Via Xinhua