Antonio French: “It is hard to keep people calm when officials use phrases like state of emergency.”

But I do worry that the state of emergency called for by the governor has escalated the situation and has invited folks from other places to come under the belief that this is where the revolution is going to happen or something like that.

I hope this really makes the broader community aware of what so many African-Americans have been protesting about, have been calling attention to in the last few months, and it leads to real action and change.

I hope that there is a tone here to come together because we want the violence to end on both sides, and what happened last night did not help anybody.

The system did not work. And, while it was careful to point out the faults of the young man who was killed, Anthony Smith, this officer also we need to agree was a bad cop.