America....living by the gun and DYING by the gun!

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

• Snipers shoot ten Dallas police officers during protest rally, killing three, police say




This is a developing news story....click on the link now to read the current version of the story, then click on it later to read the updated story as more information becomes available.

[guest49]

I,m waiting for the response from that tosser in the White House.
HE is swift to open his mouth when a black is shot by Police, but I guess his priorities dont extend to this....

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Ummmmm.....Barak Obama has already made a statement about it.

It was broadcast on Radio NZ National about 30 minutes ago.

It doesn't surprise me though....America is a country which lives by the gun and dies by the gun.

More than 10,000 Americans die of gunshot wounds every year.

[guest49]

Ummmmm.....Barak Obama has already made a statement about it.

It was broadcast on Radio NZ National about 30 minutes ago.

It doesn't surprise me though....America is a country which lives by the gun and dies by the gun.I

More than 10,000 Americans die of gunshot wounds every year.

I-ll take your word.  I'm 12,000 miles away.
As far as your 10,000 goes, its mainly gang on gang, so who gives a hoot?  And I know you have an unhealthy preoccupation with American guns, but why give a shit about something that occurs in a country on the other side of the world - a country that you are unllikely to visit and if you did, unlikely to be threatened inany way.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Well....Americans don't seem to give a shit about the hundreds of innocent civilians in Iraq who get blown up in one hit on a regular basis, even though it was America (with a little help from the UK and Australia) which created the situation in Iraq with their warmongering which resulted in the chaos/quagmire which now exists, so there you go. One only has to look at the news stories published by American news media organisations where hundreds of deaths in Iraq only get a single news article, then get forgotten. No doubt, American news organisations will go rabid for days over the killings in America, both cops killing civilians, and civilians killing cops, so I guess they regard Iraqis as being of lessor value than themselves, eh?

And lets face it....America is awash with guns and gun-happy attitudes, so why should we be surprised that guns get used as a first resort? And it appears that at least one of the perpetrators of this latest mass-shooing in Texas is an Afghanistan War veteran, so there you have it....yet another armed-to-the-teeth American citizen fucked-up by his warmongering experiences in a foreign land goes nuts with guns in an American city. You don't have this sort of stuff happening all the time in countries with tight gun laws....it is an occasional rare experience, unlike America where there has been hundreds of mass-shootings so far this year (Americans regard any shooting of four or more people by the same perpetrator as being a mass-shooting). Join the dots....!!

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

America does violence to itself, over and over again

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 1:58PM PDT - Friday, July 08, 2016


Every city in America.

YOU CAN be deeply sad. You can be truly horrified. You can be mournful, baffled, resentful, disturbed, mortified and morally humiliated by all the murderous events spanning from Louisiana to Orlando, Minnesota to Dallas and, lest you forget, all points in between.

You can feel a lot of things. But if you live in this country, one thing you absolutely cannot be, is shocked.

This is America. We ingest guns like candy. We guzzle violence as if from a fire hose, our hearts hammered to numb impassiveness every day by an endless stream of violent images, headlines, movies, gun-soaked cop procedurals, ultraviolent videogames, bleeding bodies, murdered women, a gross and ruthless NRA making the bizarre claim that more guns is the best solution to the problem that their own gun fetishism so obviously causes.

You cannot be shocked. From Philando Castile to Alton Sterling, Micah Johnson to Omar Mateen, this is what happens when macho gun culture collides with enflamed racial tension, exemplified by police brutality and institutional racism, quickly followed by militant retaliation, all underscored by increasingly entrenched cultural resentment and suspicion, inflammatory rhetoric and shameless bigotry.

Meanwhile, the richest and most powerful among us own so much of everything, it chokes off all opportunity for personal growth, community and human connection for everyone else, leaving most of us nowhere else to turn, but toward anger.

The morbid joke these days is that any mass shooting under double digits doesn't even raise an eyebrow. “Another day, another miserable hashtag,” one representing a human life, or a mass shooting, or dead schoolchildren, a lost cause, a stupefying time to be an American. The brutalities happen so fast, we can't even acknowledge the fundamental emotions.

Have we reached mass-murder fatigue? It took 49 dead in a nightclub in Florida just to get some politicians' attention, to spur them to even suggest one of the most modest gun control measures imaginable, and then… nothing happened. The old, white cowards of the GOP balked, as they always do. The NRA fell silent, before turning around and handing a rifle to a giddy, race-baiting Donald Trump.


More of same.

You think that gun control debate will get new life just because Dallas sniper Micah Johnson was an Army vet who liked target practice and attended the Academy of Combat Warrior Arts, which, among other classes, teaches seminars in “Urban Everyday Carry and Improvised Weapons” and “Weapons Defense”? He was, essentially, one of the NRA's own.

Meanwhile, gun culture remains our national shame. The vile old men in the GOP who endorse it? Even worse.

Still, it can be maddening to try and parse. What, exactly, is a symptom of what, and what's a root cause? Is racist police brutality merely reflective of a tense, racially torn culture, which is, in turn, enflamed to be that way by the NRA, by Trump, by bigots and hatemongers and the bleak ocean of violent images and bloody entertainments in which we all swim?

Which came first, the fear or the gun? The broken heart or the bleeding one? The impulse toward death or the desperate reach for love?

What about education and opportunity? What about what happens when the PTW keep gutting social services, school budgets the social safety net in favor of more tax cuts for the wealthy? And what about the biggest and most obvious demon of all: our dumb fetish for guns?

Here's a simple truth: If we banned all guns tomorrow, the nation would be almost instantly transformed, exclusively for the better.

Do you dare dispute it? There is no argument anywhere that can honestly claim we are a more peaceful, hopeful, loving, open-minded, enlightened, spiritually awake, accepting and morally intelligent community of humans, because there are 300 million firearms in the public domain, each one just itching to fulfill its intrinsic destiny.



Guns are no morally righteous point of pride. They are a national cancer. They are handheld death.

You need not be a sociologist to know that if guns were banned tomorrow, they and the false machismo, the fear, the death they embody would begin to fade from the culture almost instantly. One of the primary engines of our pain would begin to sputter and fail. Like any other obsolete technology, they would begin to be filtered out of  the culture. With manufacturing halted and social interest diminishing as no new guns entered the system, they would soon become a relic.

And then, a goddamn miracle: In a mere decade or two, every type of gun death imaginable, from suicides to mass shootings, disgruntled husbands murdering their ex-wives to toddlers shooting their parents, would plummet. Communities would transform. Our hearts would expand. This is undeniable. There is no downside. In a single generation, the nation would be downright unrecognizable.

And yet, despite all the carnage, the snipers, the radicalism, the militant stances, the NRA moronism, the dead children, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost when dumb, righteous rage is so easily armed, we are nowhere near making such an obvious and reasonable change.

Bizarrely and indefensibly, we still value the “right” to own multiple firearms, including assault weapons, more than we care about life itself, or God, or love, or peace. It's a vicious moral distortion that's unprecedented in the developed world, and it feeds straight into our racial tensions, which feeds into police brutality, which feeds militant calls to retaliation, which feeds ignorant calls for more guns, and so on. And the downward spiral continues.

And it's only us. It's only here. It is very much an American shame, an American disgrace. No other civilized nation on earth endures anything remotely close to our level of despicable gun violence. We freely weaponize our alienation, surround ourselves with flagrant lies about patriotism and the Second Amendment, and hand our fears the cruelest, deadliest tool imaginable, and then act surprised when it doesn't work. It never will.

Shocking, it most certainly is not.

• Email: Mark Morford

• Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2016/07/08/america-does-violence-to-itself-over-and-over-again

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

America's killing fields

By KATHLEEN PARKER | 8:22PM EDT - Friday, July 08, 2016


People write messages in chalk on the road outside the governor’s residence during a demonstration in St. Paul, Minnesota,
on Thursday. Philando Castile was shot and killed after a traffic stop by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota,
on Wednesday night. — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.

HORROR! SHOCK! DISBELIEF! GRIEF! ANGER! And terrible sadness.

These fractured thoughts were all I could muster upon waking on Friday to news of the ambush on Dallas police. They were still fresh in my mind from the night before when I'd turned in early, exhausted by the images of 32-year-old Philando Castile dying in Minnesota after a police officer shot him.

As we all know by now, Castile was African American and the officer was not. It started as a routine stop for a broken tail-light and ended in what has become a routine shooting followed by a routine headline.

Black man shot by police officer. How many times must we read those words?

Just 24 hours earlier, another black man, Alton Sterling, 37, was shot to death by police while being restrained in Baton Rouge.

Like Sterling, Castile did have a gun. Castile also had a concealed-carry permit, which he apparently told the officer as soon as he was stopped. Why would someone tell a police officer he had a gun if he intended to use it?

Castile was reaching for his driver'’s license and registration when the officer opened fire, says his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds.

Reynolds used her cellphone to film the aftermath of the shooting, careful to address the officer as “sir” and follow his instructions. Over and over I watched the video, trying to imagine being in that car, while at the same time feeling shame about watching a stranger who is mortally wounded.

Nothing is more intimate than death, which we all hope to face with dignity in the comforting presence of loved ones. Castile had no such luck. Instead, he was surrounded by millions of onlookers, most of whom, I feel certain, suffered with and for him.

“[Expletive]!” “[Expletive]!” “[Expletive]!” On the video, we hear the officer repeating the F-word as he realizes what has happened. Reynolds is saying, “Please don't tell me this, Lord. Please, Jesus, don't tell me that he's gone…. Please, officer, don't tell me that you just did this to him.”

My God.

On Friday morning, Castile's mother bore into the television camera. She said people can look into her eyes, at that point 48 hours without sleep, and know that she's not going away until justice is served. Across the country, protesters had gathered peacefully throughout Thursday evening to demonstrate against the shootings.

Enough.

Then suddenly in Dallas, the peace was shattered when shots were fired from a high vantage point. A shiver. Not again. When it was all over, five officers were dead and seven others were wounded.

A suspected shooter is dead, too, killed by a police bomb robot. Why not. An un-human kills the in-human. Before he died, the man told officers he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He wanted to kill white people, and white policemen, reported Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown at a news conference.

In Minnesota, Governor Mark Dayton (Democrat) said he thinks that if Castile had been white, the officer wouldn't have shot him. A retired New York City police detective wept as he spoke to CNN's Chris Cuomo about the bravery of the Dallas officers who, carrying only pistols, were wearing protective vests they knew couldn't deflect the bullets of the shooter's weapon.

Imagine.

Then, too, imagine being a young black man who is taught early on that he has to be extra-careful around the police. The worst will be expected of him.

“He shot his arm off,” we hear Castile's girlfriend saying on the video. We see Castile's blood-soaked shirt; we hear him groan and watch his head drop.

Black lives matter. White lives matter. Blue lives matter. Does anything matter anymore? What is happening to this country? A wall-mounted gun manufacturer's video ad welcomes visitors to the Columbia, South Carolina, airport. In Chicago today, no one will be surprised if a child is killed in gang crossfire. Will another black avenger try to kill another white cop? Will police still give black neighborhoods protection? “We are being hunted,” said Castile's mother.

Madness.

For now we grieve with the families of the dead and talk of ways to stem the violence. But there's really only one way to stop the killing, and it lies in changing our culture, beginning with recognizing every single person's humanity  the black youth's, the white officer's and every other in between. As Charles Blow, the New York Times columnist, put it: “Everybody deserves to go home.”

• Kathleen Parker writes a twice-weekly column on politics and culture for The Washington Post. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary In 2010.

__________________________________________________________________________

Read more on this topic:

 • 5 OFFICERS KILLED IN DALLAS; GUNMAN WAS ARMY VETERAN

 • In an apparent first, police used robot to kill sniper

 • Obama says America is horrified over Dallas attack

 • Eugene Robinson: The shootings in Dallas, Baton Rouge and Minnesota are tragedies beyond color

 • Jonathan Capehart: My heart was heavy after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Dallas broke it.

 • Christine Emba: For black Americans, this week was a nightmare. Does our country care?

 • Ilya Somin: Things to remember as we contemplate the anti-police atrocity in Dallas

 • Alexandra Petri: Dallas and American ‘contradictions’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americas-killing-fields/2016/07/08/7db1ed38-454b-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

KTJ I AM YOUR FATHER

The killing fields by Poetic Licence lol

Washington post ass wiping paper has got a bit confused with Pol Pot's Kampuchea where that Commie Bastard murdered 3 to 6 million people. 

He presided over a totalitarian dictatorship in which his government made urban dwellers move to the countryside to work in collective farms and on forced labour projects. The combined effects of executions, strenuous working conditions, malnutrition and poor medical care caused the deaths of approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian population.] In all, an estimated 1 to 3 million people (out of a population of slightly over 8 million) died due to the policies of his four-year premiership

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Have you stopped taking your meds? 

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

Meds you need them more than me lol

All the people who stir up racial hatred and division between human beings are responsible for these deaths,
and calling for the murder of police or blacks or whites is a form of mental illness.

The media in order to make money helps cause these racial problems by winding up the simple minded rebels who desperately need a cause because their lives are so very empty without the hope for something greater.

Youth is wasted on the young

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

Yep, I can tell by that reply you've definitely stopped taking your meds.   

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

where's your hat with lefties will make america into an awful country again

communism is a brain eating cancer that needs to be eradicated.

i can tell by your reply you got ur head stuck in arse

whatever happened to all that white guilt bullshit you like to lay on people

you got nothing

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from the Los Angeles Times....

Empathy is the path to healing between cops and black citizens

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PDT - Tuesday, July 12, 2016



IT IS hard to know exactly where to start in untangling the violent web of race, guns, police, crime, poverty and rage that ensnares American society. So I'll start with a shooting in a black community that got little notice outside of Los Angeles this weekend.

Saturday night, a 26-year-old woman was driving down a street in Compton. Her 15-month-old son was in the back seat. She had started following a car that looked like the one owned by her boyfriend, but when the car stopped and several men climbed out of the vehicle, she realized she was mistaken and tried to make a U-turn.That's when the men started shooting.

The young woman ended up in the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. Her little boy ended up on the TV news cradled in the arms of a policeman.

Jump back to Friday night in San Bernardino when a 9-year-old boy, his father and another man were shot dead as they walked out of a liquor store. Police said this shooting and the incident in Compton were likely gang-related. All the victims were African Americans.

This sort of news is tragically normal in most large American cities, barely noticed, even on quiet days.

In this case, these stories were completely overwhelmed by the horrific news that five Dallas police officers had been murdered by a sniper during a peaceful march organized to protest the deaths of two black men at the hands of police in Louisiana and Minnesota.

There's a big picture here and also an intimate view. The big picture begins with our history — hundreds of years during which black people were first enslaved and then kept down by laws that restricted where they could live, what they could own, whether they could vote, where they could go to school and what jobs they could have. Those restrictions did not just exist in the South, some of them shaped even sunny, pleasant places such as Los Angeles. We live with the result: Millions of black Americans whose ancestors were not allowed to amass wealth or own homes in more prosperous parts of town continue to live with that legacy in communities wracked by poverty, poor schools and scant job opportunities.

The circumstances of those communities produce many people who live on the margins — homeless people, drug users, petty criminals and the more dangerous members of organized gangs whose victims are almost always the peaceful people in their community who are just trying to get by. That is why there are more police in disadvantaged communities; there are a lot of good people to protect and more problems to contain.

And containment is the thankless job we have given the cops. Decade after decade, we fail to do enough to transform our poor and largely non-white urban neighborhoods. Instead, we leave it to the police to keep the lid on. Much of the time, they do their best, but cops are not superheroes, they are human beings. They have the flaws we all have. A few are so flawed they should not be entrusted with a gun. Like all of us, they are susceptible to fear, to anger, to frustration. They have been trained to react with overwhelming force because they often face criminals with superior firepower. Their split-second decisions are driven by this training and sometimes they get it horribly wrong.

The result is our current social crisis, inflamed further by strident voices on the left and right who seem intent on forcing a choice between black people and police. It is a choice that we need not make; a divide that can be bridged.

Consider the intimate view: Shetamia Taylor took her four sons with her to the Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas last week. When the sniper started aiming at white cops, one of his shots also hit this black woman. With a bullet in her leg, she shoved her 15-year-old son down between a car and the curb and shielded him with her body. Within seconds, she was shielded herself by several white officers. When they had the chance, they moved Taylor to a bullet-riddled police cruiser and, driving on wheel rims, took her to a hospital.

After a few worrisome hours, Taylor learned that all her sons were safe. As related in a dramatic story by Los Angeles Times reporter Molly Hennessey-Fiske, Taylor was celebrating her boys' safety at the hospital when she overheard the news about another police officer who did not survive.

“It hurt,” Taylor said. “Of course I'm thankful that my babies are OK. But somebody's dad, somebody's husband, isn't.”

The more we hurt for each other, the more empathy we develop, the closer we will get to healing and to taking the actions that will finally transform this country into a place where police and the people they are called to serve know they are on the same side.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-cops-blacks-20160712-snap-story.html

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

from The Washington Post....

Three police officers killed, three others wounded
in Baton Rouge shooting; attacker identified

By MARK BERMAN, MATT ZAPOTOSKY and PETER HOLLEY | 7:35PM EDT - Sunday, July 17, 2016


Three police officers were fatally shot and three others wounded in Baton Rouge on Sunday, July 17th. Authorities said
one officer is in critical condition. Mayor Kip Holden told NBC that the officers were responding to a call of shots fired
when they were ambushed by at least one gunman. — Photograph: Reuters.

THREE police officers were killed and three others injured in a shooting on Sunday morning in Baton Rouge, authorities said.

While police offered few immediate details about the exact origins of the incident, they say the violent incident unfolded early Sunday when officers responded to reports of a man carrying a rifle in an area filled with grocery stores and other businesses.

Colonel Michael D. Edmonson of the Louisiana State Police, the agency taking the lead on the investigation, stressed on Sunday afternoon that there was no active shooting situation and that police had killed the armed attacker, who died during a shootout with officers.

The attacker in Baton Rouge was identified during Sunday afternoon as Gavin Long, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation. Authorities are exploring whether more than one person may have played a role in the incident, according to both officials, who asked not to be identified discussing an ongoing investigation. Sunday was Long's 29th birthday, according to one official.

Two of the officers fatally shot were with the Baton Rouge police force, while the third was part of the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office. Another deputy was in critical condition after the shooting, Edmonson said at a briefing.

“The violence, the hatred, just has to stop,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (Democrat) said at the same news conference. “We have to do better. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and the people who carried out this act, the individuals, they do not represent the people of Baton Rouge, or the state of Louisiana.”

In the hours after the shooting, police had warned people to stay inside as they said they sought two other potential suspects. During an afternoon briefing, authorities said the lone attacker was dead, though they still asked people to remain away from the area where the shooting occurred.

Specific details about the shooting and the attacker remained unclear on Sunday, as officials did not say whether they believe the officers were specifically targeted or ambushed in some way. The shooting happened in a region still on edge after police fatally shot a man there, sparking heated protests that prompted a heavy law enforcement response that some have questioned as unnecessarily forceful. Activists on Sunday, meanwhile, quickly decried the shooting in Baton Rouge.

Edmonson said on Sunday that officers were contacted about a man “carrying a weapon, carrying a rifle” at about 8:40 a.m. Police at a convenience store in the area saw the man, who was wearing all black, Edmonson said.

Chaotic moments ensued. Edmonson said shots were reported fired at 8:42 a.m., and at 8:44 a.m., officers were reported down. At 8:45 a.m., more shots were fired. At 8:46, Edmonson said the suspect was reported near a car wash next to a convenience store. At 8:48 a.m., as emergency personnel began staging to treat the wounded, officers engaged the suspect and brought him down, Edmonson said.

“This has happened far too often,” President Obama said in remarks at the White House on Sunday afternoon. “I've spent a lot of time with law enforcement this past week. I'm surrounded by the best every single day. And I know whenever this happens, wherever this happens, you feel it.”

In his remarks, the latest in a string of recent comments Obama has offered in the wake of shootings of and by police officers, the president issued a simple and impassioned plea for calm and understanding.

“We don't need inflammatory rhetoric,” Obama said. “We need don't need careless accusations thrown around to score political points or to advance an agenda. We need to temper our words and open our hearts. All of us.”

East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid J. Gautreaux III said one of his deputies was slain — a 45-year-old — and two were wounded — a 41-year-old and a 51-year-old. The 41-year-old, he said, was in critical condition. The two Baton Rouge police officers killed were a 41-year-old with just under a year of service and a 32-year-old with 10 years of service, while a 41-year-old officer was shot and wounded, said Carl Dabadie Jr., the Baton Rouge police chief.

“We're grieving as a law enforcement community,” Gautreaux said. “With God's help, we will get through this,” he continued. To me, this is not so much about gun control as it is about what's in men's hearts, and until we come together as a nation, as a people, to heal, as a people, if we don't do that, and this madness continues, we will surely perish as a people.”

One Baton Rouge police officer killed on Sunday was identified as Montrell Jackson, 32, who in recent years got married and became the father of a baby boy. The father of another officer slain, Matthew Gerald,  confirmed that his son was killed in Baton Rouge. Gerald, 41, joined the police department after serving in both the Marines and the Army, a friend said.

Details also began to emerge on Sunday about Long, the gunman who police said opened fire on his birthday. Two law enforcement officials said the gunman used a semi-automatic rifle during the attack. The FBI was investigating whether Long had any ties to black separatist movements.

A cousin of Long's told The Washington Post Sunday that Long had been in Louisiana to celebrate his birthday. The cousin — who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to affect his own employment — said Long was a bright young man who had recently traveled the world and written a book about his experiences, and he could not believe he would have been involved in shooting police officers.

“I can't see my cousin doing nothing like that,” the cousin said. “I don't know. Gavin is a good kid.”

This cousin initially said he had not confirmed that the Long from his family was the one involved, but he said later on Sunday that family members had confirmed the gunman was their relative.

“Right now, I'm at a loss for words,” the cousin said. “I don't know what happened.”

The cousin said his daughter had called him on Sunday to say that Long's mother was not picking up her phone, and the family feared Long might have been involved in the shooting. The cousin said his daughter told him Long had been in Louisiana celebrating his recent birthday.

Long had served in the Army and spent time in Kuwait while he was in the service, his cousin said. Long was “quiet,” the cousin added, though the 29-year-old did post some videos online. As far as he knew, Long was not interested in black nationalist movements, and he never expressed any particularly acute outrage about the shootings of young black men by police.

“He's a smart kid, he's a very smart kid,” the cousin said. “He wasn't interested in any of that, not as far as I know.”

The cousin said he had not talked to Long in several months because Long was traveling to work on his book project. He said he could not believe, though, that his kin would have been involved in shooting police officers.

Long was a student at the University of Alabama for one semester in spring 2012, according to Chris Bryant, a school spokesman. The school's police department had no interactions with Long during this time, Bryant said.



Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden said he had spoken to officials from the White House, who offered to assist in any way possible.

“This is truly a sad day in Baton Rouge,” Holden said.

In a statement, Baton Rouge said that its police force and other local, state and federal authorities were “actively investigating the circumstances surrounding this morning's shooting.”

Agents for the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were on the scene in Baton Rouge responding to the shooting, according to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. She said in a statement that “there is no place in the United States for such appalling violence” and strongly condemned the shooting.

A spokesman for the FBI in New Orleans said he was “unsure” whether the officers were targeted or what might have sparked the incident. He declined to comment further.

But the shooting deaths came during a particularly deadly year for law enforcement, and not long after a gunman who said he was enraged by police killings targeted police in Dallas.

“When a police officer is shot or assaulted, it makes every single citizen in the country a little less safe,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, the country's largest police union. “When police officers have to worry about citizens committing unprovoked acts of violence against them it makes it more difficult for them to interact with citizens and that is a key factor in law enforcement.”

The three deaths on Sunday in Baton Rouge brought the total number of officers killed in the line of duty to 30 so far this year — up from about 16 at this point last year. The average mid-year total, according to FBI data, is about 25. The tally this year has spiked significantly in recent days from three incidents just in recent days: Two bailiffs, both deputized by the sheriff there, were killed in a Michigan courthouse last week, not long after five police officers were fatally shot in Dallas.

In May, Edwards signed a “Blue Lives Matter” bill into law, making Louisiana the first state in the country where police officers, firefighters and other first responders are a protected class under hate-crime law. Edwards, the son of a sheriff, said that this was needed because these people “put their lives on the line every day, often under very dangerous circumstances” and deserve this protection.

No other state includes police officers as a protected class under hate-crime laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But at least 37 states — including Louisiana — have enhanced penalties for assaulting police officers. In some states, hurting a police officer can be an “aggravating factor” to an assault or battery charge. Meanwhile, killing a police officer can also be an aggravating factor or circumstance in many states to make a crime eligible for the death penalty.

“I condemn, in the strongest sense of the word, the attack on law enforcement in Baton Rouge,” President Obama said in a statement earlier on Sunday. “For the second time in two weeks, police officers who put their lives on the line for ours every day were doing their job when they were killed in a cowardly and reprehensible assault. These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law, and on civilized society, and they have to stop.”

Obama said he had offered the federal government's full support to officials in Louisiana, vowing that “justice will be done.”

Obama noted that it was unclear yet what may have motivated the shooting, he emphatically called it “the work of cowards who speak for no one.” Obama has been criticized in the past for his statements about police, which some commentators and politicians have described as too critical of law enforcement.

Last week, at a town hall meeting on race and policing, Obama was confronted by one such critic — Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (Republican), who has called Obama's rhetoric on the issue “divisive.” Obama rejected the suggestion that he had not been supportive enough of police and said he has been “unequivocal in condemning any rhetoric directed at police officers.”

Obama spoke with Edwards and Holden on Sunday and offered condolences to the families of the officers killed, according to the White House. He also asked to be updated throughout the day about the shooting.

The FBI New Orleans Division sent personnel to the scene to assist.

“At this time, our focus is to help identify and bring to justice those who are responsible for this heinous act,” a spokesman said.

In a video sent to WAFB by someone who said she witnessed the shooting, a woman is heard saying that she saw a man with “a mask on looking like a ninja.” The woman, sounding panicked, said: “He's about to start popping again. Oh my God!”

Another local woman told The Washington Post that she was playing tennis with her two daughters and her husband when their game was interrupted by gunfire.

The woman, who asked to have her name withheld, was in a park about a mile from the shooting, one she chose because she thought it was located a safe distance from recent unrest. It was a beautiful morning, she said, until the gunfire erupted.

“It sounded like a shootout. After many rounds, we started to hear sirens and saw a police car driving fast down Drusilla Lane and then we got out of there,” she said. She added: “I feel trapped in our own home. I can't take my kids out and I thought we would be safe here because we are close to a police station.”

Cell phone video allegedly taken as the shooting unfolded and aired by CBS affiliate WAFB shows police vehicles descending on a gas station while gunfire echoes in the background.



Reached by phone, Justin Alford, the owner of the B-Quick Convenience Store on Airline Highway, said he couldn't comment about the incident at this time.

“Please pray for us,” he said. When asked if he would be able to speak more about the incident later, he said, “I'm not sure. It's a sad situation.”

Local reports said that police had sent a robot in the store after the gunfire to check for explosives, but Alford said he could not confirm that.

Mark Clements, who lives two blocks behind the nearby Hammond Aire shopping plaza, said he heard 10 to 12 gunshots coming from that direction around 8:40 a.m. He was letting his dogs out in his backyard when he heard the gunfire, followed by sirens and helicopters.

His neighborhood, known as Tara, has been feeling the tension over police shootings since officers fatally shot Alton Sterling earlier this month outside a convenience store.

Sterling's death, partially captured in videos from the scene that were widely viewed on social media and television, prompted intense protests that stretched for days in Baton Rouge. A day after Sterling was killed, a Minnesota man was fatally shot during a traffic stop, and the following day the gunman in Dallas killed five officers and wounded nine others.

At least 15 people have been demonstrating outside the Baton Rouge police headquarters at most times, Clements said. The largest protest occurred on on July 9th, when people lined Airport Highway for a quarter of a mile, carrying signs, singing and chanting. During the protests in the city, more than 100 people were arrested, and demonstrators and activist groups have questioned the aggressive response from police.

In Baton Rouge, police said earlier this week that they responded in that way to protests because they had received a threat to law enforcement officials in the city. According to police, a teenager accused accused of stealing guns during a burglary told investigators that he and others involved were seeking bullets to shoot officers. Police officials said that they felt this threat was credible enough that it shaped their response to protests.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have sued the Baton Rouge police and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office for their response to protests, accusing law enforcement officials of using excessive force during the demonstrations.

“What you saw in the response was because of the very real and viable threats against law enforcement,” Gautreaux, the sheriff, said last week. “All I can say beyond that is look what happened in Dallas — a very peaceful protest and then some crazy madman did what he did.”

Sterling's aunt on Sunday decried the killing, pleading against any more violence in a television interview.

“Stop this killing. Stop this killing. Stop this killing,” Veda Washington-Abusaleh told KLAF-TV, breaking into tears as she spoke. “That's how this all started, with bloodshed. We don't want no more bloodshed.”

The shooting on Sunday illustrated the dangers facing police officers, said Mark Lomax, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, pointing to the Dallas attacks that authorities there had attributed to a lone gunman acting as a sort of sniper.

“Communities and legislators say we don't want our police to look like warriors, we want them to look like peacekeepers,” Lomax said. “But one element of war is being attacked by snipers. Now they are going to have to be properly equipped and trained to deal with this.

Earlier on Sunday, a police officer in Milwaukee was shot multiple times while sitting in his squad car. The officer was on the city's south side for an investigation into possible domestic violence, and Milwaukee police say the suspect in two incidents of domestic violence that brought officers to the area walked up to the car and began firing.

The Milwaukee officer was taken to a hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries, and the suspect was found dead after apparently taking his own life not far from the shooting.

In the hours after the shooting in Baton Rouge, dozens of people gathered outside the ambulance entrance at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center. Some who arrived during Sunday were still wearing their suits and dresses, apparently having headed to the hospital after church services earlier in the day.

One of the only businesses open in the Hammond Aire plaza at the time of the shooting was Albertsons, a grocery store.

About 20 employees and customers were inside when someone came into the store asking what was going on outside. Soon after, police instructed them to not to leave. As of 2 p.m., they were still waiting inside the grocery store.

While employees resumed stocking and cleaning duties, the customers huddled on a bench near the store's entrance, checking their phones for updates. As it became apparent they wouldn't be allowed to go home any time soon, employees helped customers put their groceries into coolers to keep the food from spoiling.

State Representative C. Denise Marcelle (Democrat) the timing of the shooting is devastating for Baton Rouge, which is still working recover from the most intense protests that unfolded on the city's streets.

Marcelle, a former Baton Rouge city councilwoman, said that she was in church at Disciples Outreach Ministry in Baton Rouge this morning when the shooting broke out.

“My pastor came up to me and asked me to pray the prayer of peace and unity,” Marcelle said. “I got up and lead the prayer, and that was right around the same time that this incident happened.”

“I'm pretty shaken up that at the same time I was praying for peace someone was killing our officers,” she said. “It has to stop.”

• Adam Goldman, Wesley Lowery, Kimberly Kindy, Jessica Contrera, Theresa Vargas and Greg Jaffe in Washington and Bill Lodge and April Capochino Myers in Baton Rouge contributed to this report.

• Mark Berman covers national news for The Washington Post and anchors Post Nation, a destination for breaking news and stories from around the country.

• Matt Zapotosky covers the Justice Department for The Washington Post's National Security team.

• Peter Holley is a general assignment reporter at The Washington Post.

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Read more on this topic:

 • President Obama sharply condemns shooting

 • ‘Shooting police is not a civil rights tactic’: Activists condemn killing of officers

 • In May, Louisiana became the first state to make it a hate crime to target police

 • Cleveland police union calls for ban on open carry as fears of violence mount ahead of GOP convention

 • Baton Rouge police say group stole guns and wanted to shoot officers

 • Why the police in Baton Rouge look like they're dressed for war

 • The burning question in Dallas: Why here?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/17/baton-rouge-mayors-office-at-least-2-officers-fatally-shot