Black Lives Matter

Residents of Charlotte, North Carolina, woke up to a state of emergency and the National Guard and State Highway Patrol deployed to their city on Sept. 22 after a second night of unrest sparked by the fatal police shooting of an African-American man. 

The U.S. city of Cleveland has reached a $6 million settlement with the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American shot by police while holding a toy gun.
 
Under the terms of the settlement, Cleveland does not admit any wrongdoing, according to details of the accord announced April 25 by a U.S. District Court in Ohio.    

A jury on Feb. 11 found a rookie New York police officer guilty of manslaughter in the 2014 fatal shooting of an unarmed black man -- an incident that fueled US protests against police tactics.

A grand jury cleared two Cleveland police officers on Dec. 28 in the November 2014 fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was brandishing a toy gun in a park, and a prosecutor said there were a series of mistakes but no criminal activity. 

A white Chicago policeman was charged with murdering a black teenager on Nov. 24, hours before authorities released a graphic video showing the youth walking away from officers as he is shot 16 times. 

A gunfight between two groups erupted on Nov. 22 in a New Orleans park where hundreds of people were gathered for a block party and the filming of a music video, leaving 16 people wounded, police said.

The FBI will participate in the investigation into the death of an unarmed black Texas college football player who was fatally shot by a white officer during a burglary call at a car dealership, a suburban Dallas police chief said on August 8. 

A year ago, Ferguson, Missouri, was a mostly quiet working-class suburban town. The uneasy relationship between its growing black population and its mostly white police force barely registered in local headlines.
     

A white Ohio police officer who shot a black man during a routine traffic stop was charged with murder July 29 in what prosecutors called a "senseless" act motivated by anger.

Evidence from an autopsy on Sandra Bland, the black woman found hanging dead in a Texas jail days after a traffic stop, supports the medical examiner's initial ruling of suicide, a county prosecutor told reporters on July 23.