2016 saw police shootings and officers shot while on duty in the national headlines almost every week. The bloodshed sparked protests in major cities, talk on the campaign trail by both presidential candidates, and worst of all, violence in reprisal for lives lost at the hands of law enforcement.

  • Controversial police shootings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castille
  • Police officers ambushed in Dallas during peaceful protest
  • Black Lives Matter vs. Blue Lives Matter

July shootings of Sterling, Castille spark calls for justice

On July 5, Baton Rouge resident Alton Sterling, 37, was shot by police outside of a convenience store. Police confronted Sterling, who was selling CDs outside the store, after a homeless man called 911 and reported that Sterling had brandished a gun.

According to reports, the two officers confronting Sterling initially tased him and got him on the ground in order to take him into custody. Suspecting that Sterling was reaching for a weapon, one of the officers shot Sterling at close range several times. The county coroner later confirmed that Sterling died from multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and back.

The very next day in Minnesota, Philando Castille, a 32-year-old school nutrition services supervisor, was shot four times by a St. Anthony Police officer during a traffic stop. Castille's fianceé, Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter were in the car at the time of the shooting.

In both shootings, video footage of the confrontations spread on social media sparked widespread outrage and public protests. The video in the Castille case was particularly striking, as it shot using Facebook Live by Reynolds almost immediately after shots were fired, and at one point showed Castille bloodied from his wounds.

Weeks of protests and vigils in major cities in Minnesota followed the Castille shooting. Most were peaceful, but violence between protestors and police did erupt July 9 and 10 in St. Paul, and on July 19 a group of Minneapolis teachers were willfully arrested after blocking a roadway during their protest and refusing to disperse.

But even before those incidents, anger over the deaths of Sterling and Castille lead to another deadly shooting. This time, however, the targets were police officers.

Officers under fire

 

On July 7, during what up until that point was a peaceful "Black Lives Matter" protest in Dallas, TX, Micah Johnson, 25, an Army reservist, opened fire on groups of police and protestors using a semi-automatic rifle. Johnson killed five police officers and wound eight others, including two civilians, before he was killed hours later by a police robot-delivered bomb.

Before he died, Johnson told police negotiators that rage was his motive for his actions. He told the officers he wanted to kill police officers, specifically white police officers, in reprisal for repeated injustices against black men.

Then, on July 17, Missouri resident Gavin Long, 29, shot six police officers in Baton Rouge, LA, killing three of them. A former marine, Long reportedly had spent that morning looking for officers to shoot before he was confronted by Baton Rouge police responding to calls about a man in a long coat carrying an assault rifle. Due to the state's current open carry laws, the officers had no probable cause to arrest Long prior to him opening fire -- they were there simply to question him.

Long was subsequently killed by a S.W.A.T. officer following a gun battle with other officers. Prior to July 17, Long had posted messages to YouTube and social media citing the need to use brute force to battle oppression. He called the police shootings in Dallas "justice."

"Black Lives Matter" vs. "Blue Lives Matter"

Those tense weeks in July, in addition to a number of other nationwide incidents involving confrontations between minority groups and law enforcement, put Black Lives Matter protests in the center of the media spotlight. Even before the shootings, however, the movement, formed in 2014, was gaining media attention as some of its members openly confronted public figures, most notably Hillary and Bill Clinton, and challenged them with hard questions about past stances of crime and legislation.

As BLM garnered more and more attention, however, its members and message faced pushback from supporters of a movement formed in reaction to BLM in 2014 in order to support police officers and their families, "Blue Lives Matter." The Blue Lives Matter movement is credited with legislation passed in Louisiana in May 2016 -- months before the Sterling shooting -- making the targeting of police officers or firefighters a hate crime.

The longstanding debate over what could be done to improve race relations and stop the violence gained an additional emotional component due to the very names of the opposing movements. Supporters of one group or the other were challenged with the question, "Well, if those lives matter, does that mean others matter less?"