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 About 250 activists marched across New York's Brooklyn Bridge,
holding up signs that read "Stop murder by police" and "Stop killer
cops".
At least 12 people, some of whom appeared to be school-aged, were
arrested following a brief scuffle with police after they crossed
the bridge, and long traffic delays were reported.
The demonstration was organized by the Stop Mass Incarceration
Network following the April 4 fatal shooting of Walter Scott, an
unarmed black man shot in the back by a white police officer in
North Charleston, South Carolina.
The killing -- just one of a succession of fatal police shootings --
was captured on video, and the officer has been charged with murder.
Police in Los Angeles said they arrested 15 protesters from a group
of nearly 100 after they stopped on Metro Rail tracks and ignored
orders to disperse.
Elsewhere on the West Coast, more than 100 protesters surrounded a
police station in San Francisco and disrupted a meeting at City
Hall. In nearby Oakland, demonstrators massed outside the Oakland
Police Department and poured onto Interstate 880, television
broadcasts showed.
Rush hour on the Bay Bridge linking San Francisco to Oakland was
briefly delayed when several protesters tried to block traffic,
police said. Six demonstrators were arrested.
In Wisconsin, about 100 protesters, mostly high school students,
blocked a major roadway in Madison, where last month's fatal
shooting of unarmed black teen Tony Robinson Jr. by a white police
officer has triggered a series of demonstrations.
New York police said an off-duty officer who was not in uniform was
left with bruises on his head and arm after being struck by a
protester on the Brooklyn Bridge when he exited his stopped car
during the demonstration.
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Protesters said they hoped their march would galvanize debate about
the use of deadly force by police against minorities, with the
families of several unarmed black or Hispanic men or boys who died
in encounters with police demanding more oversight.
"What this protest right here is about is that too many are being
murdered," said Nicholas Heyward Sr., who has struggled for years to
reopen the case of his son, shot dead at the age of 13 by a police
officer 20 years ago while playing cops and robbers with a toy gun.
"Not only do I have to wait, but while I'm waiting, I am constantly
seeing innocent victims gunned down on the street for no reason at
all," he added.
Last year, protests were sparked by a string of high-profile cases
of black men losing their lives at the hands of white police
officers.
But the outbursts of anger following the deaths of Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York slowed to a
standstill over the winter.
Another group of protesters, led by Justice League NYC, has embarked
on a 250-mile trek to Washington from New York City, and is due to
reach the National Mall on April 21.
(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst, Mohammad Zargham, Eric Walsh, Barbara
Goldberg, Clarence Fernandez and Crispian Balmer Additional
reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle, Emmett Berg and Curtis
Skinner in San Francisco and Mary Reardon in Madison)
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