Police officers Montrell L. Jackson, Matthew Gerald and Brad Garafola were shot and killed Sunday morning in a shooting near a gas station in Baton Rouge, less than two weeks after a black man was shot and killed by police there, sparking nightly protests across the city. Officials identified the gunman as Gavin Long.
Baltimore police officers struggled to arrest a man who allegedly was “aggressively panhandling” downtown last month, court documents said. Photos and video by Baltimore Sun photographers captured the arrest, showing the suspect biting an officer as several officers tried to load him into a transport van.
Police were called to the unit block of N. Eutaw St. on August 13, after a 911 caller reported that a man was panhandling and “acting bizarre,” according to charging documents. The documents identified the suspect as Rominico Finacin Roland, 37, of Penhurst Ave.
A responding officer said Roland was “acting unusual, appeared to be under the influence of an unknown substance, and may have been mentally ill,” the documents said. As officers ran his name to check for warrants, police said Roland “removed what appeared to be a marijuana cigar and started to lick it and stated ‘I gonna light this up.’” The officer took the cigar, and placed it beside Roland, who then attempted to light it, the documents said. Officers placed Roland in handcuffs, at which point they said he attempted to walk away. As officers tried to stop Roland, they said he bit one officer in the arm and spit on another.
When a transport van arrived, an officer tried to load him inside, and police said Roland bit the officer on his arm and leg. Roland eventually was placed in the van but refused to sit on a bench, and raised his leg at the door, acting as if he would kick it, police said. When a witness at the scene tried to tell him to sit on the bench Roland spit on her face and chest, police said.
Police said Roland later calmed down and sat on the bench in the van while an officer was able to strap him in. But at some point, police said, Roland unbuckled his seat belt, slid back onto the floor and began kicking the backdoor of the van, breaking the lock of the interior door, according to the documents.
He was placed in another van and taken to a hospital for evaluation.
Police said Roland caused $1,000 in damage to the van.
Roland is scheduled to appear in court this month for charges of destruction of property, disorderly conduct, and trespassing, online court records show.
No attorney is listed for Roland in online court records, and an attorney listed for him in a previous case could not be reached for comment.
Roland has a lengthy arrest record, including in 2005 when he was charged with attempted first-degree murder, a charge that was later dropped.
Freddie Gray, 25, died on April 19 — a week after he was injured while being arrested by Baltimore police. Video of the arrest surfaced, protests have broken out and an investigation into his death is under way.
And now, the city is reacting. Here’s a look at the protests around the city and the reaction from the neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived — Sandtown.
On March 13, 1942, the Quartermaster Corps of the United States Army began training dogs for the newly established War Dog Program, or “K-9 corps.” Over a million dogs served on both sides during World War I.
The Baltimore City Police Department deployed their first K-9 unit on March 1, 1956. Terrance Patrick Cahill, a British police dog trainer that joined the Baltimore police department in 1959, was instrumental in establishing their program, as well as the police dog program in Washington, D.C.
The San Francisco Giants reign over baseball yet again, after ace Madison Bumgarner emerged from the bullpen to throw five shutout innings and third baseman Pablo Sandoval collected three hits in a 3-2 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Wednesday. The Giants became the first road team to win Game 7 since the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates.
But shortly after the game a man was shot in the Mission District, at 21st and Valencia streets, said San Francisco police Officer Gordon Shyy.
Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters filled the streets of Hong Kong late on Tuesday, stockpiling supplies and erecting makeshift barricades ahead of what some fear may be a push by police to clear the roads before Chinese National Day.
On the eve of Wednesday’s anniversary of the Communist Party’s foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, crowds poured into central districts of the Asian financial hub, near where National Day festivities are scheduled to take place.
There was a carnival atmosphere among demonstrators, in contrast to weekend clashes when riot police fired pepper spray and tear gas to quell the unrest. – Reuters reports
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With NPR putting some finishing touches on its borderland series this week, international attention has been focused across the Atlantic, on a place that’s equally familiar with the perils of international migration.
Anti-government protesters called an uneasy truce in the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Saturday after violent overnight clashes with police, but a separate group made an attempt to take over the main energy ministry building.
The latest installment of Hidden Maryland goes to the James N. Robey Public Safety Training Center, which offers an extensive array of suburban mockups in one cinder-block building.
Police killed one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing during a shootout and were engaged in a house-to-house search for a second suspect on Friday in the Boston metropolitan area. Much of Boston was under a virtual lockdown as police searched the region. The manhunt for 19-year-old bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ended with his capture on a boat parked on a residential property on Franklin Street in Watertown, Massachusetts.
SEE ALSO: Maryland uncle of Boston bombing suspects speaks out
Baltimore neighborhoods
Baltimore street photographers
Year in review
Freddie Gray: protests, aftermath
24 hours with...
A. Aubrey Bodine
Viewing Baltimore from above