Barbaric US police arrest 150 civil rights protesters in California

More than 150 people protesting against police brutality in the United States have been arrested in the state of California.

On Monday night, the protesters in California and several other places denounced grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers in the shooting death of black men in New York City and Ferguson last summer.

Hundreds of protesters stormed onto a major highway – known as Interstate 80 — in the college town of Berkeley near San Francisco in California on Monday night blocking traffic in both directions.

According to California Highway Patrol spokesman Daniel Hill, angry protesters threw rocks and other objects at police officers.

Hill said that the police arrested more than 150 demonstrators, mostly for resisting or obstructing police.

Earlier, basketball stars in New York including Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James also expressed their anger against police brutality by wearing shirts emblazoned with “I can’t breathe” — the last words of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African American, who died after being placed in a chokehold by an NYPD police officer on Staten Island in July.

In Washington, DC, demonstrators marched outside the US Capitol and the Justice Department, bearing the names of black Americans killed by police.

Protesters chanted, “Black lives matter” and “Off the sidewalks, into the streets.” One woman held a sign that said, “Stop killing us.”

Protesters also laid down in the streets to simulate being dead, blocking rush hour traffic on a major thoroughfare that connects the White House to upper northwest Washington.

The protests came days after a grand jury decided not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo in Garner’s chokehold death in New York City and two weeks after a grand jury decided not to indict former policeman Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Unlike the fatal shooting of Brown, the chokehold death of Garner, a father of six and grandfather of two, was recorded by a cell phone and widely seen, contributing to the public outrage. In the video, Garner repeatedly told police officers “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”