Protest against US police brutality held in Milwaukee

People have taken to the streets in the US city of Milwaukee to call for justice after prosecutors declined to charge an officer who fatally shot a mentally ill black man eight months ago.

The demonstrations began after District Attorney John Chisholm decided on Monday not to charge former police officer Christopher Manney, citing the officer killed Dontre Hamilton in self-defense.

Manney shot 31-year-old Hamilton 14 times after responding to a call of a man sleeping in a downtown park. His family said Hamilton suffered from schizophrenia.

Police Chief Edward Flynn, however, fired Manney in October, saying he ignored department policy and treated Hamilton as a criminal by frisking him.

The protesters gathered at the downtown park on Tuesday evening, holding signs that read “Justice 4 Dontre.”

Then they marched through downtown streets to the Bradley Center, where they surrounded the main entrance and blocked fans from entering the Milwaukee Bucks game.

Other demonstrators staged a brief “die-in” laying down on the ground at a busy shopping mall in suburban Wauwatosa.

The United States has been the scene of protests against police brutality after grand juries in New York City and Ferguson decided not to indict white police officers who killed two unarmed black men Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

These cases, along with the death of a 12-year-old black boy killed by police officers in Ohio while holding a toy gun in a playground, have inflamed anger in the country with regard to relations between police and African-Americans.