La. Cop, Wounded in Attack That Left 3 Officers Dead, Sues Black Lives Matter, DeRay Mckesson

A Louisiana law-enforcement officer has filed a lawsuit against Black Lives Matter, accusing the movement and several of its leaders, including DeRay Mckesson, of inciting violence that led to a gunman’s attack on officers in Baton Rouge, La., last summer, leaving three officers dead.

According to the Associated Press, Mckesson and four other Black Lives Matter leaders are named as the defendants in the suit filed Friday on behalf of one of the officers wounded in the July 17 “ambush” by a black Marine veteran, who was also shot and killed during the incident.

AP notes that the suit does not identify the officer who is filing the suit, but also notes that the description of the plaintiff matches East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Nicholas Tullier, who has been at a Houston rehabilitation hospital since November.

The same attorneys who filed the lawsuit Friday have previously sued Black Lives Matter (and Mckesson) on behalf of another Baton Rouge police officer who was injured during a protest surrounding Alton Sterling’s police-shooting death last July.

“This is quite a world,” Mckesson said Friday when informed about the lawsuit, according to AP.

Last July, Gavin Eugene Long, who turned 29 the day of the shooting, shot at six law-enforcement officials, killing three. The shooting was called an “ambush,” with officials stating that he intentionally targeted officers. Long had a strong online presence, and prior to the shooting, he expressed anger over Alton Sterling’s death at the hands of police earlier that same month. He also left behind a note stating that he believed he had to hurt “bad cops as well as good cops in the hopes that good cops (which are the majority) will be able to stand together and enact justice and punishment against bad cops.”

East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Garafola, Baton Rouge Police Officer Matthew Gerald and Baton Rouge Police Officer Montrell Jackson were all killed in the attack.

Friday’s lawsuit claimed that Mckesson was “in charge” of a July 9, 2016, protest that “turned into a riot,” accusing the activist of not doing anything “to calm the crowd and instead” inciting violence on behalf of Black Lives Matter.

The suit describes Long as an “activist whose actions followed and mimicked those of” the sniper who had killed five officers in Dallas just days prior to the 2016 incident, and also accused Black Lives Matter leaders of encouraging others to harm police “in retaliation for the death of black men killed by police.”

“Obviously, at this point, talk show hosts were holding them responsible, and they were having to defend the blame and responsibility for what they had caused whether in whole or in part,” the suit claims.

Read more at the Associated Press.