Over 200 arrests as tensions spike at US police protests

More than 200 people were arrested in chaotic scenes during a new night of protests over US police violence towards blacks as authorities revealed Sunday that the Dallas shooter had apparently been plotting a major bomb attack.
Anger around America over the deaths of two black men at the hands of police last week -- the state reason for the black Dallas gunman's deadly rampage targeting white officers -- showed no signs of abating with a prominent Black Lives Matter activist among those arrested.
Most of the protests Saturday night into Sunday were peaceful. People inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement -- which arose in recent years in response to repeated cases of police using lethal force against unarmed blacks -- took to the streets in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

But authorities said a full-scale riot broke out in Saint Paul, Minnesota and resulted in 102 arrests. Protesters blocked a freeway and attacked police with rocks, bottles, fireworks, Molotov cocktails and metal bars, police said. Twenty-one officers were injured in the hours-long melee.
One officer was hurt when a rioter dropped a 25-pound chunk of concrete on his head from a bridge or overpass, police spokesman Steve Linders said.
It was in a Saint Paul suburb that one of last week's deaths occurred. Both killings were caught on horrific video that has since gone viral.

In Baton Rouge, where the other black detainee died, more than 100 protesters were also arrested, local media reported citing police, among them the activist leader DeRay McKesson who livestreamed the incident.

Chilling new details released about Dallas shooter Micah Johnson Sunday fleshed out a still sketchy portrait of the 25-year-old US Army reservist and Afghanistan war veteran who apparently supported black militant organizations, some classified as hate groups.
Police said the Dallas ambush shooter had taunted police negotiators and scrawled on a wall in his own blood before he was ultimately killed in the standoff.
He had opened fire Thursday evening with a powerful rifle during a peaceful protest against the shooting deaths of the two men in Louisiana and Minnesota, triggering hours of chaos in the downtown section of the big Texas city.

A search of Johnson's Dallas-area home turned up bomb-making materials and a manual in which he wrote about military tactics.
Police now believe he had been planning something big long beforehand, and that the two black deaths last week were a trigger that prompted him to act, Dallas police chief David Brown told CNN on Sunday.