Tag Archives: Police

After Dallas shooting, U.S. Police forces rethinking tactics

Law officers march down a street during protests in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

By Nick Carey

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Police departments across the United States are searching for new tactics for a more difficult era of racial tension, increasingly lethal mass shootings and global terrorism.

After last week’s killing of five officers in Dallas, the deadliest assault on U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, nearly half of America’s 30 biggest cities have issued directives to pair up police officers on calls to boost safety, according to a Reuters survey of police departments.

And one, Indianapolis, said it would consider the use of robots to deliberately deliver lethal force, an unprecedented tactic until Thursday when the Dallas police department used a military-grade robot to deliver and detonate explosives where the shooter was holed up.

While a wave of anti-police protests since the 2014 killing of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, has revived memories of 1960s protests over civil rights and the Vietnam War, Thursday’s shooting marked something different: a willingness to take up arms against police.

Ambushes against police on Thursday and Friday in Tennessee, Georgia and Missouri added to a sense of being under siege and vulnerable at a time when many departments already were grappling with heightened community suspicion over the use of deadly force.

Responding to the Dallas shooting, Denver’s police union wants officers to wear riot gear for local protests and to be armed with AR-15 assault rifles while patrolling Denver International Airport, the union said in a letter to the mayor published in The Denver Post.

The most immediate change is the pairing up of officers. Thirteen of the country’s 30 biggest city police department said they are pairing up officers – a change that could strain already thinly staffed police ranks in some regions.

(The 13 are New York City, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Seattle, Memphis, Boston and Portland.)

In Albuquerque, New Mexico — one of several cities dealing with an officer shortage — pairing officers could mean “possibly longer response times for lower priority calls,” said its police spokesman, Simon Drobik. And for cities with tight municipal budgets, some question whether this expensive strategy can last beyond the short term.

Doubling up officers “is a resource-intense approach and it will be a significant challenge for some police departments to sustain that strategy for very long,” said Thomas Manger, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), which represents police chiefs from the country’s largest cities.

He predicted over the longer term that police will increase surveillance and expand their security presence at major events across the country. “This will cause complaints about violating people’s constitutional rights to free assembly, but it is the only way to guarantee safety,” he said.

‘TARGETS ON THEIR BACK’

The attack in Dallas came during a demonstration Thursday over the shooting by police of two black men. Alton Sterling, 37, was shot by police in Baton Rouge on Tuesday and Philando Castile, 32, was killed on Wednesday night in a St. Paul, Minnesota suburb.

The Dallas shooting also left seven officers injured.

“We need to figure out a way to ensure that police officers don’t get targeted, because right now they do have targets on their backs,” said Andrea Edmiston, director of governmental affairs for the National Association of Police Organizations, which represents about 241,000 U.S. police officers.

Few of the police forces approached by Reuters said they could discuss specific changes in tactics beyond pairing officers on the beat. Los Angeles and Denver, for instance, declined for safety reasons to discuss tactics.

Indianapolis police spokesman Kendale Adams said his department would consider using a robot to deliver a bomb. “Our team will consider all options in (a) deadly force encounter,” he said in an e-mail.

If every police department had New York City’s resources, the challenges would be much less.

New York police spokesman Stephen Davis said some 1,500 of the city’s 36,000 police officers have received coordinated heavy weapons training.

Davis said there are officers around the clock who can respond to an active shooter situation in an estimated three to five minutes.

“As most active shooter situations last under 10 minutes, that speed is crucial,” he said. “But we are well aware of the luxury that we have with so many resources available to us.”

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement policy group, said that as 90 percent of America’s 18,000 police forces have under 50 officers, many simply cannot afford the kind of staff needed to respond as quickly as needed to mass shootings.

Wexler said the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 had been a milestone for police in realizing that major public events could become targets.

“Police departments will have to deploy additional forces to what have traditionally been low-risk events,” he said, “because those events now have the potential for some extremist or madman to commit violent acts.”

But he said that the best way to reduce deaths from attacks with semi-automatic weapons is to gain the trust of local communities so people will come forward and help prevent attacks. Once an attack starts, there is only so much the police can do.

The MCCA’s Manger said that beyond police strategy and tactics, what America needs is a change of mindset.

“Everyone on both sides needs to take a step back.”

(Additional reporting by Julia Harte in Washington; Editing by Jason Szep and Mary Milliken)

Dallas Mother thanks police for shielding her and her son

A makeshift memorial at Dallas Police Headquarters one day after a lone gunman ambushed and killed five police officers at a protest decrying police shootings

DALLAS (Reuters) – When the bullet struck her leg during the protest in downtown Dallas, Shetamia Taylor’s first thoughts were for her four sons.

Taylor tackled the nearest boy to the ground then looked up to see a police officer racing to shield them from the gunfire.

“That officer jumped on top of me and covered me and my son and there was another one at our feet, and there was another one over our head,” Taylor told reporters on Sunday.

“I’m thankful for all of them, because they had no regard for their own life.”

Pushed into the news conference at Baylor University Medical Center in a wheelchair and hospital gown, Taylor wept as she recounted seeing two officers shot in front of her.

One was a tall, white, bald policeman. “As he was going down, he said, ‘He has a gun. Run,'” she recalled.

Police said a military veteran killed five officers on Thursday in a rampage that was the most deadly day for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Taylor, 37, said when she first heard the gunfire, she thought it might be fireworks left over from Fourth of July celebrations. She said the attack left her hurt and angry.

“Why would he do that?” she asked of the gunman, identified by authorities as Micah X. Johnson, 25.

Johnson launched his ambush during a protest against the killing by police of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana, one of a string of demonstrations nationwide.

Taylor had attended with her four sons, aged 12 to 17.

“I was scared, I really didn’t know what was going to happen,” Jamar Taylor, 12, told reporters, breaking into sobs as he described becoming separated from his mother.

Taylor said, in her opinion, the police were not all “out to get us” and that people should reserve judgment.

“Please, just stop and think,” she said. “I tell my kids all the time, you know, ‘Closed mouth, open mind will get you a long way in life.’ Sometimes, just be quiet and think first.”

Another of her sons, Wavion Washington, hailed the officer who shielded them as they escaped.

“He was really selfless and he put himself in harm’s way … to protect us.” Washington told the news conference. “So, we understand that there are a few bad apples out there, but they don’t spoil the whole bunch.”

(Reporting by Reuters Television; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by David Gregorio)

Protests on Saturday shut down main highways, numerous arrests

People gather on Interstate 94 to protest the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by Minneapolis area police during a traffic stop, in St. Paul, Minnesota,

By Bryn Stole and David Bailey

BATON ROUGE, La./MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) – Protests against the shootings of two black men by police officers shut down main arteries in a number of U.S. cities on Saturday, leading to numerous arrests, scuffles and injuries in confrontations between police and demonstrators.

Undeterred by heightened concerns about safety at protests after a lone gunman killed five police officers in Dallas Thursday night, organizers went ahead with marches in the biggest metropolis, New York City, and Washington D.C., the nation’s capital, among other cities.

It was the third straight day of widespread protests after the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling, 37, by police in Baton Rouge on Tuesday and the death of Philando Castile, 32, on Wednesday night in a St. Paul, Minnesota suburb, cities which both saw heated protests on Saturday.

The most recent shooting deaths by police come after several years of contentious killings by law enforcement officers, including that of Michael Brown, a teenager whose death in the summer of 2014 caused riots and weeks of protests in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.

On Saturday evening, hundreds of protesters shut down I-94, a major thoroughfare linking the Twin Cities, snarling traffic.

Protesters, told to disperse, threw rocks, bottles and construction rebar at officers, injuring at least three, St. Paul police said. Police made arrests and used smoke bombs and marking rounds to disperse the crowd.

Protesters at the scene said police fired tear gas and rubber bullets. Police said early on Sunday they had begun clearing the highway of debris in preparation for re-opening it.

A march in Baton Rouge saw scuffles between riot police and Black Panther activists, several of whom carried shotguns. Louisiana law allows for weapons to be carried openly.

After a short standoff later in the evening, riot police arrested as many as 30 demonstrators and recovered weapons. Prominent black activist and former Baltimore mayoral candidate Deray McKesson was among those arrested.

Protests also took place Saturday in Nashville, where protesters briefly blocked a road, and in Indianapolis. A rally in San Francisco also briefly blocked a freeway ramp, according to local media.

Hundreds of protesters marched from City Hall to Union Square in New York. The crowd swelled to around a thousand people, closing down Fifth Avenue.

Some chanted “No racist police, no justice, no peace” as rain fell in New York.

“I’m feeling very haunted, very sad,” said Lorena Ambrosio, 27, a Peruvian American and freelance artist, “and just angry that black bodies just keep piling and piling up.”

New York police said they arrested about a dozen protesters for shutting down a major city highway.

(Additional reporting by Laila Kearney, Elizabeth Barber and Chris Michaud in New York; Writing by Nick Carey; Editing by Mary Milliken and Ryan Woo)

Wave of anti-police protests strains U.S. law enforcement

People hold their hands in the air as they yell "hands up, don't shoot!" during a protest for the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in the Manhattan borough of New York

By Curtis Skinner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A wave of anti-police protests since the 2014 killing of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, is creating strains at law enforcement agencies across the United States, forcing out some police chiefs and top prosecutors.

A driving force behind the change has been Black Lives Matter, a national organization whose name is a potent symbol for demonstrators railing against police violence, according to law enforcement officials and academics.

“What Black Lives Matter has been able to do is to maintain a focus on this issue and a persistence that has lasted for over two years now,” said Jody Armour, a professor at University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law.

Armour, who has expertise in police and racial profiling, called the movement “the power of democracy unleashed.”

“Black Lives Matter” has again been used as a rallying cry in the cases of two unarmed black men shot dead by police this week in Baton Rouge and Minneapolis, and organizers have begun mobilizing.

Formed in 2012 after the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Florida, Black Lives Matter’s national profile exploded in mid-2014 after white police officer Darren Wilson shot dead unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson.

Angry protests have roiled the country since, and police chiefs and top prosecutors in big and small cities have been ousted.

In San Francisco, the police killing of 26-year-old Mario Woods in December sparked months of protests and demands for the ouster of police chief Greg Suhr. In May, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee asked him to step down, saying tensions between police and people of color had “come into full view.”

In Chicago, two-term Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez lost her Democratic primary bid by a landslide in March, after activists dogged her campaign over her handling of the 2014 police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Her loss came just months after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ousted then-police superintendent Garry McCarthy, saying it was an “undeniable fact” that public trust in police had eroded. As evidence, he cited Black Lives Matter protests organized after a video of the killing was released.

BATON ROUGE AND MINNEAPOLIS

The group has used demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience to pressure police chiefs and elected officials. At times their lead has been followed by more established groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and local clergy, as was the case in Chicago.

Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said local politicians were much more responsible for the string of departures and firings than protesters.

“I know from being involved in this work for around 50 years, that (since Ferguson) we’ve seen more of these political terminations than we’ve seen in years past,” he said.

Hundreds of demonstrators converged on a convenience store in Baton Rouge on Wednesday where two police officers fatally shot 37-year-old Alton Sterling, an unarmed black man who was selling CDs, early on Tuesday morning.

Protesters on Thursday also gathered at the mansion of Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton in St. Paul, about 10 miles (15 km) southeast of where 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot by a police officer after a traffic stop on Wednesday.

Both of the killings were captured on video.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said heightened media attention and the ubiquity of cell phones have fueled recent firings and resignations.

“There’s a far greater public awareness that’s going on and it’s increased (protesters’) ability to affect the process,” Pasco said.

He said the attention has made police chiefs an easy scapegoat for politicians aiming to quell unrest.

“Whenever there is a problem, is Rahm Emanuel going to resign or is he going to fire the police chief?” Pasco said, referring to the Chicago mayor. “Is the mayor of San Francisco going to resign, or is he going to fire the police chief? That’s the question.”

Melina Abdullah, professor and chair of pan-African studies at California State University Los Angeles, said keeping the heat on elected officials has been critical to the movement’s success.

“With sustained pressure there, we can make sure there is a response,” said Abdullah, an organizer of the local Black Lives Matter chapter. “We know another murder is going to happen.”

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Jason Szep and Richard Chang)

Police seeking man in killing of two homeless men in San Diego

Person of interest in three attacks

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – Police in San Diego on Tuesday were seeking a man possibly connected to the slaying of two homeless men and the wounding of a third over the holiday weekend, officials said.

Police were calling the man a “person of interest” and not a suspect and they provided few details on what connects him to the attacks on the three men.

Witnesses saw the “person of interest” near where the first attack occurred on Saturday, and he was captured on surveillance video inside a local store wearing a backpack, San Diego police Captain David Nisleit said in a phone interview.

In that first attack, the body of a homeless man was discovered on fire between a highway and train tracks in the Mission Bay area of San Diego, police said.

The victim, a 53-year-old man, was pronounced dead at the scene.

On Monday before dawn, a 61-year-old man was discovered bleeding with trauma to his upper body, less than 4 miles (6 km) south of the first attack, police said.

He was rushed to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, and was still listed in critical condition on Tuesday, Nisleit said.

On Monday morning, just over an hour after the discovery of the badly wounded man, a third victim was discovered near some tennis courts in the Ocean Beach neighborhood about 3 miles (5 km) to the west of the second attack, police said.

He had trauma to his upper torso and was already dead when police arrived, said Nisleit, who declined to provide further details on the victim’s injuries. Investigators have not been able to identify the man or establish his exact age, he said.

The names of the other two men have not been released.

All three homeless men appeared to have been sleeping when they were attacked, Nisleit said. A single person is believed to have carried out the two slayings and the wounding of the third victim, he said.

“Obviously this is somebody we want to locate and get out of the community,” Nisleit said.

San Diego police have been warning homeless people about the attacks and are seeking potential tips from them, he said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Bangladeshi police may have killed hostage by mistake

People place flowers at a makeshift memorial near the site, to pay tribute to the victims of the attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery and the O'Kitchen Restaurant, in Dhaka

By Ruma Paul and Rupam Jain

DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladeshi police said on Tuesday one of the men they shot dead during the siege of a Dhaka cafe on the weekend may have been a hostage killed by mistake, while the hunt for accomplices of the gunmen who killed 20 people focused on six suspects.

Police on Tuesday named five Bangladeshi gunmen who stormed the restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic zone late on Friday. Most of the victims in the violence claimed by Islamic State were foreigners, from Italy, Japan, India and the United States.

It was one of the deadliest militant attacks in Bangladesh, where Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed a series of killings of liberals and members of religious minorities in the past year.

The government has dismissed those claims, as it did the Islamic State claim of responsibility for Friday’s attack.

Pictures of five young men clutching guns and grinning in front of a black flag were posted on an Islamic State website hours after the attack, along with the claim of responsibility, but despite that, authorities have ruled out a foreign link.

Police believe that Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), an outlawed domestic group that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, played a significant role in organizing the band of privileged, educated young attackers.

Confusion over exactly how many gunmen were involved was at least partly cleared up on Tuesday when police said among the six people security forces killed when they stormed the building to end a 12-hour stand-off was Saiful Islam Chowkidar, a pizza maker at the Holey Artisan restaurant.

“We killed six people in the restaurant. A case has been registered against five. The sixth man was a restaurant employee,” Saiful Islam, a top police official investigating the attack, told Reuters.

“He may not be involved,” he said, adding that the investigation was going on.

An employee of the cafe, shown a photo of a man killed at the eatery and wearing a chef’s outfit, identified him as Chowkidar, and said he had worked there for 18 months.

Police named five men as attackers in a case filed on Tuesday to allow them to launch official investigations, including questioning families of the militants for clues as to what turned them into killers.

Two other suspects are in hospital.

‘GUIDED’

Police said they were hunting for six members of the JMB who were suspected of organizing the attack.

“Six members of JMB have been shown as accused in the case. We are trying to arrest them because they could be the mastermind,” Islam said.

The JMB has been accused of involvement in many of the killings over the past year and Islam said police were interrogating more than 130 of its members already in custody in the hope of gleaning clues.

“We don’t know who is the mastermind behind the attack. We just know that these boys were guided to launch an attack on the restaurant,” he said.

The five named in the case filing were Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz, Meer Saameh Mubasheer, Khairul Islam and Shafiqul Islam.

The attack marked a major escalation in the scale and brutality of violence aimed at forcing strict Islamic rule in Bangladesh, whose 160 million people are mostly Muslim.

It has shocked the country, as have details emerging about the well-to-do lives of some of the gunmen.

At least three of the gunmen were from wealthy, liberal families who had attended elite Dhaka schools, in contrast to the traditional Bangladeshi militant’s path from poverty and a madrassa education to violence.

Three of the attackers had been missing since the beginning of the year, police have said.

Two had attended a private university in Malaysia, one of whom, Nibras Islam, was not particularly religious, according to a student who played football with him at a private college in Dhaka between 2009 and 2011.

“We are in touch with investigators in Malaysia and they are sharing all the information but as of now we have not found any links with international militant groups,” Islam said.

One of the dead gunmen was from a poor family and had studied at a madrassa and another hailed from a lower-middle class background, said another senior police official who declined to be identified.

(Additional reporting by Aditya Kalra, Serajul Quadir in DHAKA and Rupam Jain and Krishna N. Das in NEW DELHI; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Robert Birsel)

Bangladesh says some restaurant attackers were well off and educated

By Aditya Kalra and Serajul Quadir

DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh police sought more information on Monday from friends and family of the men suspected of carrying out a deadly attack on a restaurant in the capital, and some are believed to have attended top schools and colleges at home and abroad.

The gunmen stormed the restaurant in Dhaka’s diplomatic zone late on Friday and killed 20 people, most of them foreigners from Italy, Japan, India and the United States, in an assault claimed by Islamic State.

It was one of the deadliest militant attacks to date in Bangladesh, where Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed a series of killings of liberals and religious minorities in the last year while the government says they were carried out by local groups.

Whoever was responsible, Friday’s attack marked a major escalation in the scale and brutality of militant violence aimed at forcing strict Islamic rule in Bangladesh, whose 160 million people are mostly Muslim.

Islamic State posted pictures of five fighters it said were involved in Friday’s atrocity to avenge attacks on Muslims across the world.

“Let the people of the crusader countries know that there is no safety for them as long as their aircraft are killing Muslims,” it said in a statement.

Posts on Facebook identified the men, pictured on an Islamic State website grinning in front of a black flag, as Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz, Meer Saameh Mubasheer, Andaleeb Ahmed and Raiyan Minhaj.

Most went to prestigious schools or universities in Dhaka and Malaysia, officials said.

“A majority of the boys who attacked the restaurant came from very good educational institutions. Some went to sophisticated schools. Their families are relatively well-to-do people,” Bangladeshi Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu told India’s NDTV.

TRACING ROOTS

Several posts on social media said the man identified by police as Nibras Islam attended Monash University in Malaysia. A friend who knew him while he studied at Dhaka’s North South University told Reuters that Islam later went to Monash.

Two others went to an elite public school in Dhaka called Scholastica. Masudur Rahman, deputy commissioner of Dhaka police, said officers were investigating those links.

Initial evidence points to the fact that Nibras Islam, Meer Saameh Mubasheer and Rohan Imtiaz “may be involved,” in the attack, Rahman said.

“There may be a link to international terrorist groups, including IS; we are looking into that angle,” he said, adding that the attackers were educated, well off and brainwashed.

Saifaul Islam, another investigator, said police were holding two people suspected of involvement in the assault, including one detained soon after the attack.

“We have two persons with us, but we don’t know if they are victims or suspects. They are currently undergoing treatment and we’d get to know about their role in the incident only after they recover.”

Nobody had yet come forward to claim the bodies of the six dead men, he said. “We are taking DNA samples of them and will see if it matches with the families. We have some suspicions, we know some boys had gone missing over the last two-three months.”

Just days after the attack claimed by its rival jihadi movement Islamic State, a regional branch of al Qaeda urged Muslims in India to revolt and carry out lone wolf attacks.

The call by al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) follows warnings by security officials and experts that the two groups are trying to outdo each other in the region and claim the mantle of global jihad.

Bangladesh’s $26 billion garment industry is braced for the fallout from the killings, fearing major retailers from Marks and Spencer to Gap Inc could rethink their investment.

Japan’s Fast Retailing Co, owner of the Uniqlo casual-wear brand, will suspend all but critical travel to Bangladesh and has told staff there to stay home.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has offered Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina help in the investigation.

“The Secretary (Kerry) encouraged the government of Bangladesh to conduct its investigation in accordance with the highest international standards and offered immediate assistance from U.S. law enforcement, including the FBI,” U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

(Additional reporting by Rupam Jain in NEW DELHI and Zeba Siddiqui in MUMBAI; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani and Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Nick Macfie)

Gunmen take hostages at cafe in Dhaka’s diplomatic quarter

Gulshan area in Dhaka, Bangladesh

DHAKA (Reuters) – Gunmen attacked a restaurant popular with expatriates in the diplomatic quarter of the Bangladeshi capital on Friday and took hostages, including several foreigners, police said.

Eight to nine gunmen attacked the Holey Artisan restaurant in the upscale Gulshan area of Dhaka, and police were preparing to start an operation to rescue the hostages, said Benjir Ahmed, the chief of Bangladesh’s special police force.

CNN said 20 people were being held in the restaurant.

Ahmed said the assailants had hurled bombs at police. One policeman was dead and two others wounded by gunfire that erupted as they surrounded the restaurant, police said.

A resident near the scene of the attack said he could hear sporadic gunfire nearly three hours after the attack began. “It is chaos out there. The streets are blocked. There are dozens of police commandos,” said Tarique Mir.

Bangladesh has seen an increase in militant Islamist violence over the last year. Deadly attacks have been mounted against atheists and members of religious minorities in the mostly Muslim country of 160 million people, with attackers often using machetes.

Militants killed two foreigners last year, leading several Western firms involved in the country’s $25 billion garment sector to temporarily halt visits to Dhaka.

Both Islamic State and al Qaeda have claimed responsibility for militant attacks in the country. But the government denies foreign militant organizations are involved and blames two local groups, Ansar-al-Islam and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen.

The U.S. State Department said all Americans working at the U.S. mission there had been accounted for. A spokesman said in Washington the situation was “very fluid, very live”.

(Reporting by Serajul Quadir; Writing by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Andrew Roche)

As Duterte takes over in Philippines, police killings stir fear

A member of the Philippine National Police stands guard as he detains people as part of the "Rid the Streets Of Drinkers and Youth" operation on a main road i

By Manuel Mogato and John Chalmers

MANILA (Reuters) – Two things catch the eye in the office of Joselito Esquivel, a police colonel enforcing a national crackdown on drugs in the Philippines’ most crime-ridden district: a pair of boxing gloves in a display cabinet and an M4 assault rifle lying beside him.

“It’s all-out war,” the Quezon City officer says of a spike in killings of suspected drug dealers by police across the country since last month’s election of Rodrigo Duterte, a tough-talking city mayor, as the country’s president. “Duterte has already given the impetus for this massive operation.”

Duterte has vowed to wipe out drug crime within six months but, according to Chito Gascon, head of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the aggressive rhetoric behind his promises has already instilled a sense of impunity among the police.

“Basically, you have Mr. Duterte saying: ‘It’s okay, I’ve got your back’,” said Gascon.

On average, at least one person has been shot dead by police or anonymous vigilantes every day since the May 9 election that swept Duterte to power, an escalation from the first four months of the year when the rate was about two a week.

Handwritten warning signs have been left on some corpses.

Duterte, who will be inaugurated on Thursday for a six-year term, has cheered the police on: after a druglord was killed in a northern province recently, he traveled there to congratulate them and hand over a reward worth about $6,000.

Critics, including leaders of the influential Roman Catholic church and human rights advocates, fear a spiral of violence could lie ahead for the Philippines if vigilantism and summary executions become an accepted norm after Duterte takes office.

“My concern is that instead of law and order, what we will see is lawlessness and fear,” said Gascon. “What will result is an increase in the body-bag count.”

On Monday, Duterte branded as “stupid” human rights groups and lawmakers who have complained about his draconian plans to crush crime and re-introduce the death penalty.

“When you kill someone, rape, you should die,” he told his last public meeting as mayor of Davao City, where death squads have killed hundreds of drug-pushers, petty criminals and even street children since 1998, according to rights groups.

Duterte denies any involvement in the vigilante killings.

A political outsider whose coarse defiance of the traditional ruling class has drawn comparisons with Donald Trump, Duterte has even figured in commentaries on Britain’s vote to leave the European Union as an example of a global trend towards populism triumphing over the establishment.

POLICE COVERING THEIR TRACKS?

Duterte’s pick to be the country’s police chief, Ronald dela Rosa, concedes that some recent killings may have been carried out by officers involved in the drugs business who were covering their tracks so that the new president does not go after them.

“That could be true,” he told Reuters. “Some police officers are shifting from drug protectors to drug punishers.”

But dela Rosa added that so much work towards wiping out drug crime has been accomplished recently that his job will be easy when he takes over at the end of this week.

Railing against critics, he said most of the victims in the recent wave of killings were shot by police in self-defense.

“I have no problem how many people die in legitimate police operations, the police have a right to defend themselves,” he said. “We are police officers, we are not hard killers.”

Only two of the roughly 60 recent killings took place in Quezon City, a crowded and gritty part of sprawling Metro Manila that has the country’s highest crime rate. Most were in areas outside the capital that are less intensively policed.

Esquivel, the officer in Quezon City, said his force has also adopted a softer tack by inviting drug peddlers and addicts to surrender and go into rehabilitation. Just last week, over 1,000 gave themselves up there, he said.

Despite that gentler approach, police in the Philippines are open about their readiness to use guns.

Outside Esquivel’s headquarters there is a police firing range and a banner cheerily announces a monthly “shoot fest”, a contest for officers where sometimes winners receive a gun.

According to data from the University of Sydney, the number of guns in the Philippines is a small fraction of the total in the United States, but Filipinos seem much more inclined to use them.

Gun deaths per 100,000 people in the United States was at 10.54 in 2014, but the Philippines’ rate of 7.2 in 2008, the last year for which figures were available, was not far behind.

NARCO-STATE

Duterte has predicted that if the tide of drug addiction in the Philippines is not pushed back, it will become a narco-state.

In 2012, the United Nations said the Philippines had the highest rate of methamphetamine use in East Asia, and according to a U.S. State Department report, 2.1 percent of Flipinos aged 16 to 64 use the drug, which is known locally as “shabu”.

There appears to be support in the Philippines for Duterte’s uncompromising line on criminals.

When a suspected rapist was killed in custody recently, the CHR raised concerns, but they were lost amid an outpouring of sympathy for the police on social and mainstream media.

Still, many people across the country are feeling anxious.

“There is a sense of fear because what was done to the hardened drug couriers, users and manufacturers could be done to you,” said Winston Boston, a 49-year-old financial adviser in Manila. “Anyone could just be accosted.”

(Additional reporting by; Neil Jerome Morales; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Police shoot dead masked man who took hostages in German cinema

German special police during hostage situation

By Ralf Banser

VIERNHEIM, Germany (Reuters) – A masked man took hostages at a cinema in western Germany on Thursday before police stormed the complex and shot him dead, police said.

No other people were injured, a police spokesman said.

The attacker, who carried a rifle or “long gun”, acted alone and appeared to have been a “disturbed man”, the interior minister of Hesse state, Peter Beuth, told the regional parliament.

Police had not identified the man or established his motive, spokesman Bernd Hochstaedter said, adding that nothing immediately pointed to him having a militant background.

German television showed pictures of heavily-armed police, wearing helmets and body armor, storming the Kinopolis complex in Viernheim, south of Frankfurt, and a couple fleeing the building.

Cinema employee Guri Blakaj told Reuters the gunman, who appeared to be aged between 18 and 25 and was about 1.7 meters tall, entered the cinema at around 3 p.m. and told workers to get into an office.

He then went into a cinema theater. Blakaj, who said there were about six workers and 30 cinemagoers in the building, then heard shots fired.

Police special forces stormed the building and shot him.

There was still a heavy police presence at the scene into the late afternoon, and a helicopter circled overhead.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers, Michael Nienaber and Sabine Siebold; Editing by Andrew Roche)