Officer Sues Black Lives Matter Leaders Over Baton Rouge Shooting
A Louisiana police officer who sustained wounds in a shooting spree in Baton Rouge last year filed a lawsuit against Black Lives Matter leaders on Friday. The shooting, which occurred on July 17 last year involved a black military veteran and left 3 police officers dead while 3 others were seriously injured.
Reuters reports that the lawsuit was filed in a U.S. district court in Louisiana and names DeRay McKesson and four other leaders from Black Lives Matter as defendants. The lawsuit also seeks at least $75,000 in damages.
The name of the officer wasn’t mentioned in the suit, but its description of the appellant matches Nicholas Tullier, the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Deputy. Tullier is still recuperating at a rehabilitation hospital in Houston.
The attack on the police officers occurred against the background of the killing of Alton Sterling, a black man who was fatally killed by police. Gavin Long, the black gunman who killed the Baton Rouge police officers and was later killed at the scene, was targeting police. He also had a history of making violent posts online. Long also identified himself as a part of an African-American offshoot of the anti-government, mostly white Sovereign Citizen Movement.
According to the filing, the officer was shot by "a person violently protesting against police, and which violence was caused or contributed to by the leaders of and by 'BLACK LIVES MATTER',"
Black Lives Matter leaders have debunked claims that their movement calls for violence against police officers, Reuters reports.
The police officials who lost their lives in the shooting include a 41-year-old Baton Rouge police officer with a little less than a year of service with the force, a 32-year-old officer who served for a decade, and an East Baton Rouge Sheriff's deputy
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After learning that activists in Minneapolis were tracking federal law enforcement cars in real time using encrypted Signal chats, the FBI opened a formal investigation. Investigators believe that this coordination effort may have transcended from protest to criminal obstruction.