Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson filed a lawsuit against the city of Baton Rouge, La., Thursday over his arrest last month at a protest for Alton Sterling during which more than 200 people were detained, the Associated Press reports.
The lawsuit filed on behalf of Mckesson and two others arrested accuses the city and police officials of violating their civil rights and using excessive force. The suit claims that police responded in a "militarized and aggressive manner," approaching protesters in military gear and gas marks and threatening them by pointing their weapons directly at them, the suit says.
"Defendants used excessive force in attacking, battering, beating and assaulting plaintiffs and class members without provocation or the need for defense," the suit reads.
Mckesson was arrested July 9 near police headquarters on charges of obstructing a highway. However, District Attorney Hillar Moore had said that Mckesson, along with some 100 others who were arrested, would not face prosecution by his office.
As AP notes, the governor of Louisiana and the Baton Rouge Police Department's chief have stood by the department's response in the protests, saying that there were viable threats against law enforcement. Authorities said they discovered one plot to allegedly harm officers, in which three suspects were arrested on charges of robbing a pawn shop of guns so that they could carry out the plot.
Read more at WAFB.