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Two police officers among four fatally shot in Canada: authorities

Emergency vehicles are seen at the Brookside Drive area in Fredericton, Canada August 10, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Kev Bourque/via REUTERS

By Anna Mehler Paperny

FREDERICTON, New Brunswick (Reuters) – Four people, including two police officers, were killed in a shooting in eastern Canada on Friday in the latest eruption of gun violence across the country that has led to calls for weapons bans in cities.

Police said a suspect was taken into custody just three weeks after a gunman walked down a busy Toronto street, killing two people and wounding 13 others before taking his own life.

Police in Fredericton, a city of about 56,000 that is the capital of the province of New Brunswick, said two of the dead were police officers but gave few details about the circumstances of the shooting and did not release names. They said the suspect was being treated for serious injuries.

Local media images showed emergency vehicles converging on a tree-lined residential street. Nearby facilities were closed and authorities imposed a lockdown for residents before issuing an all-clear message.

“It was scary,” said Marlene Weaver, who was in bed on Friday morning when she heard shots ring out in her neighborhood. “It takes you back to the shooting in Moncton.”

Three RCMP officers were killed and two more were wounded in 2014 in Moncton, New Brunswick, about 195 km (121 miles) from Fredericton, in one of the worst incidents of its kind in Canada.

Gun laws in Canada are stricter than in the United States but a proliferation of weapons has led to an increase in gun-related crimes in recent years.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were assisting Fredericton authorities in the investigation.

New Brunswick had only three homicide shootings in 2016, according to Statistics Canada.

“Awful news coming out of Fredericton,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Twitter. “My heart goes out to everyone affected by this morning’s shooting. We’re following the situation closely.”

Jeff Magnussen, general manager of a golf course near the site of the shooting, said by phone he heard multiple gunshots before 8 a.m. local time.

“You hear a lot about gun violence in the United States,” he said, “but this morning when I heard those noises, what’s starting to sink in is that those noises were people losing their lives. To have it happen so close to us is shocking. Now we’re becoming the story that nobody wants to hear.”

In the wake of the Toronto bloodshed, the city council voted overwhelmingly to urge the federal government to ban the sale of handguns in the city. Gun laws are under federal jurisdiction.

“Why does anyone in this city need to have a gun at all?” Toronto Mayor John Tory said. Canada’s largest city has had 241 shooting incidents this year, resulting in 30 deaths, a 30 percent increase in fatalities.

On Thursday, Ontario pledged more money for police and to keep suspects behind bars while they await trial on gun crimes charges, as the Canadian province grapples with rising shootings involving domestically obtained weapons.

(Additional reporting by Danya Hajjaji and Allison Martell in Toronto and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Writing by Bill Trott; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Jeffrey Benkoe)

No arrests after 66 shot, 12 killed, in weekend Chicago gun violence

A Chicago police officer attends a news conference announcing the department's plan to hire nearly 1,000 new police officers in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. on September 21, 2016.

(Reuters) – Chicago police have made no arrests tied to the shootings of 66 people over the weekend, 12 of them fatal, but dozens were taken into custody on gun charges, the city’s police chief said on Monday.

Police Superintendent Eddie T. Johnson said additional officers had been deployed to prevent retaliatory shootings, leading to the arrests of 46 people on firearms charges. Police seized 60 guns, adding to a total of 5,600 already confiscated in Chicago so far this year.

“I share the anger and frustration that many Chicagoans are having today because, if anything, this should underscore the continuing issue that we have with illegal guns and offenders that are out on the street that are willing to use them,” Johnson said.

Johnson told reporters there were some promising leads in investigations of the weekend bloodshed, but he did not elaborate and provided few updates on crime statistics for the third most populous U.S. city. Authorities had previously said gun violence was on a decline this year.

“What happened this weekend did not happen in every neighborhood of Chicago but it is unacceptable to happen in any neighborhood of Chicago,” the city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, told reporters on Monday.

“There are too many guns on the street. Too many people with criminal records on the street. And there is a shortage of values of what is right and what is wrong,” said Emanuel, a Democrat.

An earlier wave of shootings in Chicago emerged as a talking point for Republican Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign, as he pledged to crack down on street crime.

The rash of shootings over the weekend also elicited comments from President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a former New York City mayor who has touted his crime-fighting record there.

Giuliani urged Chicago residents to vote against Emanuel’s bid for a third term next February and back Garry McCarthy, also a Democrat, who served as the city’s police chief for four years until 2015.

(Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Tom Brown)

At least 40 shot and four killed in a night of Chicago gun violence

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – At least 40 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend during the seven hours from midnight Saturday to early Sunday morning, with four fatalities, city police said on Sunday, a stark violent streak in a city where authorities say gun violence has been decreasing this year.

“These were both random and targeted shootings on our streets,” said Fred Waller, Chief of the Patrol Division of the Chicago Police Department, in a press conference.

He said most of the shootings are connected to gang violence in the city of about 2.7 million people, the third-largest in the United States.

Police said gunmen targeted a block party, a gathering after a funeral, and other gatherings on a night where thousands of people gathered for a downtown concert.

Local media reported that the brunt of the violence happened in the city’s West Side, where 25 people were shot in separate attacks.

Waller touted that shootings in 2018 were down from last year.

The Chicago Tribune, which has been tracking shooting statistics, reported earlier this month that shootings in the city have declined, with 533 fewer shootings as of Aug. 1 than the same time in 2017.

“By no means do these statistics show that we have a victory,” Waller said.

He said that police are working with other law enforcement groups to target gang activity.

“I promise we will not be defeated,” Waller said.

More specifics on the shootings were not immediately available late on Sunday.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

Gunman dead after shooting 14, killing one, in Toronto: Canadian police

People leave an area taped off by the police near the scene of a mass shooting in Toronto, Canada, July 22, 2018. REUTERS/Chris H

TORONTO (Reuters) – Fourteen people, including a young girl, were shot near downtown Toronto, police in Canada’s biggest city said on Sunday, with one person killed and the gunman also dead.

The young girl was in a critical condition, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders said.

People react after the sounds gunshots were heard near the scene of a mass shooting in Toronto, Canada, July 22, 2018, in this still image taken from a video obtained from social media. Twitter @NSXOXOII/via REUTERS

“We are looking at all possible motives… and not closing any doors,” Saunders told reporters at the site of the shooting.

Paramedics, firefighters and police converged on the shooting in Toronto’s east end, which has many popular restaurants, cafes and shops.

Police said the gunman had used a handgun. Earlier reports said nine people had been shot.

Reports of gunfire in the city’s Greektown neighborhood began at 10 p.m. local time (0200 GMT Monday), CityNews.com said.

Witnesses said they heard 25 gunshots, the news website reported.

Toronto is grappling with a sharp rise in gun violence this year. Deaths from gun violence in the city jumped 53 percent to 26 so far in 2018 from the same period last year, police data last week showed, with the number of shootings rising 13 percent.

Toronto deployed about 200 police officers from July 20 in response to the recent spate in shootings, which city officials have blamed on gang violence.

Toronto Mayor John Tory told reporters that the city has a gun problem and guns were too readily available to too many people.

(Reporting by Denny Thomas and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Paul Tait)

Maryland teen wounds two at school, dies after gunfight with officer

Emergency services and law enforcement vehicles are seen outside the Great Mills High School following a shooting on Tuesday morning in St. Mary's County, Maryland, U.S., March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Sait Serkan Gurbuz

By Ian Simpson

GREAT MILLS, Md. (Reuters) – A 17-year-old student shot and critically wounded two fellow students at a Maryland high school on Tuesday morning before dying after a gunfight with a campus security officer, a law enforcement official said.

The shooting, which came amid a renewed national debate over gun violence following last month’s Florida high school massacre, occurred just before 8 a.m. (1200 GMT) at Great Mills High School in St. Mary’s County, about 70 miles (110 km) south of Washington.

The 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy who were wounded were taken to hospitals, county Sheriff Timothy Cameron said. The girl was in intensive care with life-threatening critical injuries, while the boy was in good condition, the sheriff said.

The gunman was identified as Austin Wyatt Rollins, and Cameron said there was “an indication” of a prior relationship between him and the female student, though he added that was still under investigation.

The latest in a long string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools and colleges took place a little more than a month after 17 students and educators were shot dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

That massacre sparked a new student movement against gun violence, including a national school walkout last week that included some Great Mills students. It occurred just days before a planned Saturday march in Washington calling for new restrictions on guns.

“We recently had a protest about school violence last week, and now this has happened,” said Kameron Norwood, a 16-year-old sophomore, as he and other students who had been transported to another nearby high school waited to be picked up by relatives.

Sheriff Cameron said Rollins pulled out a Glock semiautomatic handgun around 7:55 a.m. (1155 GMT) in a hallway and shot the students.

The attack, which lasted less than a minute, ended after the school resource officer, Deputy 1st Class Sheriff Blaine Gaskill, ran inside the building and confronted Rollins, with both firing a single shot almost simultaneously.

The officer was not harmed, Cameron said. Rollins was confirmed dead at 10:41 a.m. (1441 GMT) after being taken to a hospital.

The incident appeared to be one of the only instances in which a school resource officer, typically a sworn law enforcement member, was able to intercede in the midst of an active shooting.

In one example, in Arapahoe County, Colorado, a school resource officer was credited with helping to end a 2013 fatal high school shooting after he approached the gunman’s position in the library. The shooter, a student, took his own life.

An armed school resource officer had also been on the campus of Stoneman Douglas at the time of that shooting, and was criticized for failing to stop the gunman, who was armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle. The officer, who resigned, said he had not been sure where the gunfire was coming from.

U.S. President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association have proposed arming teachers trained in firearms use to combat the threat of school shootings, while gun safety advocates have demanded a ban on semiautomatic rifles, among other laws.

More than 29,000 public schools in the United States, or roughly 30 percent, reported having at least one full- or part-time school resource officer in 2013, according to a 2015 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Great Mills High School senior Wayne Waul (2nd L) and his mother Jill Ryan (4th L) leave Leonardtown High School in Leonardtown, Maryland, U.S., March 20, 2018. Great Mills students and parents reunited at Lenoardtown after the shooting at their school. REUTERS/Sait Serkan Gurbuz

‘WHY US?’

Rollins was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys football team and NASCAR racing, according to his Facebook page, where he also “liked” the sort of tastes typical of an American teenager: McDonald’s, Wrangler jeans, the “Transformers” movie and Sour Patch Kids candy. He appeared several times on the school’s honor and merit rolls for good grades, according to lists published in a local newspaper.

Parkland students and Great Mills students exchanged supportive messages on Twitter following Tuesday’s shooting.

“We are here for you, students of Great Mills, together we can stop this from ever happening again,” tweeted Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Stoneman Douglas High School who survived last month’s rampage.

“You never think it’ll be your school and then it is,” posted Mollie Davis, who identified herself as a student at the school and tweeted during the lockdown. “Great Mills is a wonderful school and somewhere I am proud to go. Why us?”

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen, Gina Cherelus and Elizabeth Diltz in New York; writing by Joseph Ax; editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. House passes bill to help schools combat gun violence

People supporting gun control attend a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing about legislative proposals to improve school safety in the wake of the mass shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By Lisa Lambert and Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to help schools and local law enforcement prevent gun violence, one month after the mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 people.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 407-10, sending it to the Senate for consideration.

Earlier on Wednesday, the White House announced President Donald Trump’s support of the bill, which is far short of the broader gun control legislation he talked about shortly after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Since that massacre, student protesters have successfully lobbied for tighter gun controls in Florida. Hundreds of them gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to take their argument to a Congress that has long resisted placing new limits on firearms and gun sales.

The House-passed bill would authorize federal grants, totaling $50 million a year, to fund training, anonymous reporting systems, threat assessments, intervention teams and school and police coordination.

The measure, however, would not allow any of the funding to be used for arming teachers or other school personnel. The White House said the legislation would be improved by lifting that restriction.

“The best way to keep our students and teachers safe is to give them the tools and the training to recognize the warning signs to prevent violence from ever entering our school grounds, and this bill aims to do just that,” said Republican Representative John Rutherford of Florida, a former sheriff who sponsored the school safety bill.

It was not yet clear when the Senate would take up the House-passed bill.

Already awaiting action in the Senate is a bill to strengthen existing background checks of gun purchasers. It enjoys broad bipartisan support but has not been scheduled for debate.

Congressional aides said there were ongoing discussions about possibly folding the school safety and background check bills into a massive government funding bill that Congress aims to pass by March 23.

Eleven organizations, including some gun control and law enforcement groups, on Wednesday sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer urging passage this month of the background checks bill.

Neither the House nor Senate bills address many of the gun control initiatives backed by students, teachers and families of shooting victims at the Florida school.

In emotional testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Katherine Posada, a teacher at the school, recounted the horror she experienced the day of the shooting and urged Congress to ban assault-style weapons like the AR-15 rifle used by Nikolas Cruz, who has been charged in the murders.

“Some of the victims were shot through doors, or even through walls – a knife can’t do that,” Posada said. “How many innocent lives could have been saved if these weapons of war weren’t so readily available?”

Since the Florida shooting, the Republican-led Congress and Trump’s administration have considered a variety of measures to curb gun violence while trying to avoid upsetting the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group or threatening the right to bear arms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

Protesters with signs targeting the NRA and advocating an assault rifle ban filled the hearing room in the Senate on Wednesday and occasionally applauded as some Democrats on the panel spoke about enacting stricter gun laws.

Meanwhile, the No. 2 official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation told lawmakers in testimony Wednesday that his agency dropped the ball by mishandling several tips about Cruz before the shooting, and said reforms were underway.

“The FBI could have and should have done more to investigate the information it was provided prior to the shooting,” Acting Deputy Director David Bowdich said.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Lisa Lambert, David Alexander and Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Tom Brown and Jonathan Oatis)

Chicago homicides fall 16 percent in 2017

Chicago Police officers investigate a crime scene after a motorist was shot in the head and lost control of his vehicle along the 5300 block of west Monroe Street in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., October 31, 2017. The driver later died in the hospital, according to the police.

(Reuters) – Homicides in Chicago fell 16 percent in 2017 while shootings were down and firearms arrests were up, police said on Monday, marking a reduction in bloodshed that made the city a symbol of U.S. gun violence and an object of criticism for President Donald Trump.

Police reported 650 homicides in an annual report on crime statistics, down from 771 in 2016. Shooting incidents fell 22 percent and the number of shooting victims fell by 892 people, a 21 percent drop. Meanwhile, gun arrests increased 27 percent and police reported seizing more than 8,600 illegal weapons.

Police attributed the drop to putting more officers on the streets, investing in new technology and a smarter policing strategy.

The city was also coming off a high baseline after the number of homicides in 2016, which represented a nearly 60 percent spike from the previous year.

The United States’ third largest city still ranks No. 1 in murders, with more than the two largest cities combined. New York and Los Angles each had fewer than 300 homicides in 2017.

Overall crime for other offenses – including sexual assault, robbery, aggravated battery, burglary and vehicle theft – was down 2 percent, police said.

“I am proud of the progress our officers made in reducing gun violence all across the city in 2017, but none of us are satisfied,” Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in the report. “In 2018, we are going to work to build on the progress we made last year – to reduce gun violence, to save lives and to find justice for victims.”

Chicago initiated police reforms in 2017 after a federal investigation found officers routinely violated people’s civil rights, citing excessive force and racially discriminatory conduct.

The city hired more than 1,100 new police officers in 2017, and the department issued a new policy on use of force.

Crime fell by 43 percent in Englewood district and 26 percent in Harrison, the first two districts to employ so-called Strategic Decision Support Centers, police said.

The centers use predictive crime software to enable a more efficient deployment of officers, install more cameras, set up gunshot detection systems and send real-time notifications and intelligence data to officers on their smartphones, the department said.

The deployment of more than 7,000 body cameras was the largest of its kind in the United States, the report said.

Trump made Chicago crime a theme of his 2016 campaign and kept criticizing the city in 2017 even as crime fell.

“Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!” the Republican president wrote on Twitter in June.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Trump’s tweet referred to sending more federal agents to Chicago and plans to prosecute firearms cases aggressively.

A spokesman for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, thanked the U.S. government for 20 additional agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives but said the progress was made before those agents had arrived.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Frank McGurty and Jonathan Oatis)

Chicago police push for community assistance after deaths of three children

Chicago Police Department coordinator trying to bring community together

By Timothy Mclaughlin

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Glen Brooks, a Chicago Police Department area coordinator, stood in front of a sometimes hostile crowd for the third time this week, calling on the community to help curb the city’s gun violence.

“There is an evil out here, if we do not organize and become powerful it will continue to spread,” he said Thursday night, speaking in the parking lot of an auto parts store on the city’s West Side.

“It will continue to take our young men and turn them into something no parent could ever imagine.”

In the wake of three fatal shootings of young children — aged 2, 11 and 12 — in recent days, the department held a series of interventions aimed at convincing those in violent neighborhoods to become more involved.

The police also want to overcome years of mistrust that has led to hostility with the city’s minority communities, which see the police as having used excessive force against its members for years.

Discriminatory policing practices in Chicago’s minority neighborhoods have “eroded CPD’s ability to effectively prevent crime,” a January report from the Department of Justice said. The rate of solved murders in Chicago regularly lags the national average.

Neighborhoods on the city’s South and West Sides, where the three children were shot this week, are impoverished and plagued by unemployment.

Last year, Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, had a surge in violence that sent murders to 762, the highest since 1996.

The children who died this week were three of the 74 people murdered so far this year, a decrease from 82 in the same period last year, according to police. The number of shootings has ticked up to 330 from 324 in the same period last year.

Police, and community activists, point to the arrest of Antwan Jones, 19, who turned himself in and was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Takiya Holmes, 11, as an example of how quickly cases can be closed if people are willing to work with law enforcement.

“We need the community to help us,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said after Jones’ arrest. “In this case, they stepped up.”

Police were assisted by community activist Andrew Holmes, who worked with other groups and spoke to Jones’ mother in an effort to convince him to turn himself in.

“They are not our enemy,” Holmes said of the police in an interview with Reuters.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Dan Grebler)

U.S. Congress shrugs off guns, Zika as summer break nears

By Richard Cowan and David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress is headed for a seven-week recess without addressing gun violence, the Zika virus outbreak and other pressing issues, amid persistent election-year bickering.

Despite recent gun violence, the House of Representatives will not vote this week on a proposal to keep firearms out of the hands of people on terrorism watch lists, that chamber’s Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday.

Similarly, President Barack Obama’s request for $1.9 billion in funds to combat the Zika virus and the birth defects it can cause has been stalled in Congress since February.

Republicans and Democrats were also at odds over spending bills that would keep the government functioning beyond Sept. 30, when current fiscal year funding expires.

When Republicans took over control of Congress, they vowed to get things done, but have had difficulty doing so during this election year, failing to pass a budget or even consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.

It did, however, approve bipartisan legislation helping Puerto Rico climb out of a crippling debt crisis and is trying to make progress on legislation aimed at improving police relations with local communities in the aftermath of gun violence.

With only four days left before the start of an unusually long recess, a failure to vote on guns this week would postpone any possible action by the House on the issue until Sept. 6 at the earliest. That is when lawmakers will return from break.

After that, lawmakers will be working only for short stints ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential and congressional elections.

A June 12 mass shooting in Orlando and gun violence in Dallas and other cities has again propelled gun control to prominence, but the National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress so far have staved off even bipartisan legislation.

Gun control is generally opposed by Republicans and supported by Democrats. Some Republicans have talked about a gun bill possibly moving through Congress in the fall, in the midst of the campaign season, but Democrats were skeptical.

“This Congress will do nothing on curbing gun violence,” Representative Xavier Becerra of California, a member of the House Democratic leadership, told reporters.

There is even disagreement about whether House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi talked about a Democratic proposal to establish a special committee on gun violence. Democrats say Pelosi raised the issue with Ryan after the Dallas shootings. Ryan’s office says he has never discussed the topic with anyone.

Republicans in the House and Senate have signed off on a $1.1 billion Zika funding bill, but Democrats are balking over what they see as “poison pills” attached to the money that would deny funds to women’s healthcare provider Planned Parenthood and ease some environmental provisions.

House Speaker Paul Ryan meanwhile showcased his “A Better Way” agenda, flashing a glossy pamphlet at a press conference listing a set of proposals designed to lure votes in November’s elections but do nothing this year legislatively.

Republicans have also pushed for new federal probes of Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, on her use of private emails while secretary of state.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, David Morgan and Kouichi Shirayanagi; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and James Dalgleish)

Protests, U.S. gun violence worry some black travelers from abroad

By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) – With protests hitting many U.S. cities, the deadly ambush of Dallas police, and the ever-present threat of gun violence, four countries have urged citizens to be on alert if visiting the United States, and some black travelers are worried about making the trip.

Some African community groups in the United States and elsewhere told Reuters that family members of those already in America were scared by recent events, and some had been warned by relatives to reconsider any trip.

“When we talk to them in the community, some of the things that they say are, ‘there are so many crazy things happening in your country that if I can avoid coming I won’t come,'” said Ibrahima Sow, president of the Association of Senegalese in America.

The Bahamas, Bahrain, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates have warned citizens to be on guard if visiting U.S. cities rocked by sometimes violent protests that erupted over the last week following the fatal shootings of two black American men by police.

In stark terms, the Bahamas told young men especially to exercise “extreme caution” when interacting with police. “Do not be confrontational and cooperate,” it said.

Sow said concerns about travel to the United States have been high since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. His group gives specific guidance to Senegalese travelers about how to behave with the police.

“We say there are things that you need to know if you are stopped by the police,” Sow said. “We tell people to be cautious and when you get stopped in the streets by police don’t move your hands, don’t move your body, don’t do anything.”

‘JUST AWFUL’

Some similar organizations in Europe said they also had longstanding advice that they give to members who are thinking about visiting the United States.

“I would feel less safe there than four or five years ago,” said Louis-Georges Tin, president of France’s Council of Black Associations, which gathers about 100 organizations in France to fight against racism and promote French ties with Africa.

That sentiment was echoed by others including Paul Rose of britishafrocaribbean.com, a website and think tank for the British Afro Caribbean community. He said social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter had raised awareness of what he called “atrocities” by U.S. police.

“You don’t want to find yourself in situations where you are confronted with the police,” Rose said. “Look at the incarceration rates of black men in America, look at the effects of the economic downturn, which affect the black community far more. The stats are just awful.”

Some people already living in the United States said the turbulence is sometimes too much for their visiting relatives, even if the perception is worse than the reality.

“I have a cousin who is here right now and she’s even scared to go outside to 34th street,” said Zainab Bunduka, a 55-year-old employee at New York City’s North Shore Hospital. She is originally from the West African country of Sierra Leone, which was ravaged by civil war during the 1990s.

“She’s scared because we don’t have all these gunshots back home,” said Bunduka.

(Additional reporting by Karin Strohecker in London and Chine Labbe in Paris; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Frances Kerry)

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