Reactions of Baton Rouge protestors, bystanders
18th July 2016 · 0 Comments
By Mason Harrison
Contributing Writer
Two weeks after the shooting death of Baton Rouge resident Alton Sterling, protesters continue to descend on the city from across the country with many making charges of excessive force at the hands of police officers conducting mass arrests near the capitol. Lawyers representing many of the arrested protesters have filed suit against the city.
Madie Salvar, who traveled to the state capitol from New Orleans, complained of a militarized police force set on making arrests and not facilitating “our First Amendment rights.” Salvar, who was arrested July 9 along with two other activists, said, “They charged at people. They charged at people. They charged at people,” referring to a sudden sweep of protesters from the main thoroughfares ringing the statehouse and grounds.
Video has emerged showing protesters standing on what is described as “private property,” with several activists telling The Louisiana Weekly that demonstrators were allowed to gather alongside the main corridors being cleared by Baton Rouge police officers.
“There was this lady,” Salvar said. “She owned the property. She told us, ‘This is my property. You are welcome here. You can protest here. I don’t have a problem with that.’”
But many protesters were charged with obstructing the roadways around the capitol. “We were standing on the sidewalk,” said Andrew McDaniel, a legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild. Images show officers pulling civilians from sidewalks onto the streets to make arrests and using tear gas to disperse crowds onto the roadways.
“I was the second person arrested of the evening,” said McDaniel. “I went to talk to a man who was being arrested so that I could get his name and the officer told me to ‘back the F*ck up.’ So, I backed away to remove myself from the situation and was then arrested.”
McDaniel said he overheard police officers deciding to give protesters “a few minutes” to clear the area near the capitol building after a protest march that drew hundreds. “Then they started pulling out zip ties and people started taking pictures and video.”
Dozens were arrested during a series of protests in the weekend following Sterling’s July 5 death outside of a convenience store on the city’s south side by police officers. Complaints continue to emerge about alleged police misconduct in handling the arrests, leading to a civil suit filed July 14 by the ACLU of Louisiana against Baton Rouge.
The suit, squared at the city’s beleaguered police department, was filed “for violating the First Amendment rights of demonstrators who were protesting peacefully against the killing of Alton Sterling,” according to a press release issued by the civil rights group.
Joining the suit are the National Lawyers Guild, the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice and the Black Youth Project 100. “The lawsuit alleges that the police used excessive force, physical and verbal abuse, and wrongful arrests to disperse protestors…[e]yewitness accounts recorded by plaintiffs in the suit show police in full riot gear with assault rifles, lunging and grabbing at…people and throwing them to the ground.”
Officials with the city of Baton Rouge have not responded to the suit.
The tension between Baton Rouge officers and civilian activists remain charged after Sterling’s death and now more so after three men were arrested last week in a plot to kill Baton Rouge officers on the heels of the deaths of five police officers in Dallas. Those slayings were in response to the nationwide debate over alleged police misconduct and its effect on the lives of millions of Black Americans in the country’s urban core.
Ryan Kailath, a reporter with New Orleans National Public Radio affiliate WWNO, said the mass arrests in Baton Rouge turned potentially grave with the arrival of members of the New Black Panther Party. “Everything seemed pretty eventful (after the march) until a contingent of the Black Panthers showed up and started marching toward the police station.”
Kailath said their presence “electrified the crowd,” otherwise milling about in the heat of the day. “There were about 30 Panthers and the cops took notice. So, about 50 cops lined up in full riot gear and began to tackle people and make arrests. I saw the police struggling to take guns away from the Panthers. I knew then I didn’t want to stick around.”
But he, too, was caught up in what activists have described as confusion following the police action and was arrested. “I kept saying, ‘I’m a journalist. I’m a journalist. I’m a journalist.’ I kept saying this the entire time I was being arrested and I was ignored.” But one officer did respond: “’I’m tired of you guys saying you’re journalists’ – that’s a direct quote.”
Kailath said eventually his belongings, lost during his arrest, were returned to him and officers “asked me how I was feeling and even put the stuff I had lost in my pockets for me.”
But others, Salvar said, didn’t fare as well. “They kept telling us to disperse, but there was nowhere for us to go. We were blocked in on all sides. Salvar said she and others with her were tackled by police officers when they were unable to exit the area fast enough. “They put these zip ties on me so tight that my hands went numb in one minute.”
Police arrests in Baton Rouge have garnered national media attention, following the arrest of prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson who traveled to the city in the days after Sterling’s death to call for swift reforms in a long-troubled police force.
Ieshia Evans, another out-of-town protester, was captured by a photojournalist mid-arrest with upturned hands in a flowing green summer dress surrounded by officers in riot gear preparing to place plastic restraints on her wrists and remove her from the area. The Evans image made headlines and flooded the Internet, with some likening her stance to a similar silent protest by a singular Black woman more than 60 years ago, Rosa Parks.
This article originally published in the July 18, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
