Hundreds of people marched through downtown Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday night, after a Raleigh police officer shot and injured a 26-year-old man, Javier Torres, reports the Raleigh News & Observer. With shouts of “no justice, no peace,” and some people wearing masks, the crowd was followed by a heavy police presence. “I have kids, and this is my community,” said Wanda Gilbert Coker, a community activist. “We’re sick and tired, and in the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, and we’re sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
In a pre-dawn news conference on Wednesday, Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown blamed “reckless and false information that has been spread on social media” for inciting the protests. She said the body cameras worn by police will show those rumors were incorrect, including a rampant Twitter rumor that the suspect was simply coming out of a pizza shop. “You will see the individual does have a pizza box, but he also has a gun,” she said. The police chief said Torres was running directly at an officer with a gun. The officer shot one time and the bullet hit Torres in the abdomen, she said. Deck-Brown said she believes protesters crossed a line by coming to her home. “I understand the frustration but what happened tonight, last night, was wrong on a lot of levels,” she said. Long-time community activist Octavia Rainey asked why police have to shoot someone rather than use other de-escalation techniques. “The shooting is unnecessary, and the police department needs to look at that policy,” Rainey said. “And they can’t justify it. They’re shooting way too much now. It needs to be looked at by an outside entity now.”