Again and again and again and again

Eric Garner. Michael
Brown. Tamir Rice.

Staten Island.
Ferguson. Cleveland.

Again and again, in
city after city, police officers have used deadly force against people of color
under, at best, questionable circumstances.

Garner died after an
officer put him in a chokehold, a tactic that was prohibited by his police
department; Brown was unarmed when a white officer shot and killed him; Rice, a
12-year-old boy, was playing with a pellet gun in a park.

Public outrage and
protest followed each death, as did calls for change in the way that law
enforcement and the courts treat black people.

So last week, when
police again killed two black men under questionable circumstances, public
outcry was inevitable. In Rochester, activist Frederick Douglass and other
members of B.L.A.C.K., a black leadership and activism group, organized a Black
Lives Matter rally and march that started on Friday
night.

“We
can’t just not say anything anymore,” said Ricardo Adams, who acted as a
media liaison during the rally, which started at the Liberty Pole. “We need to
confront it, confront the people in power.”

In Baton Rouge,
police pinned Alton Sterling to the ground and repeatedly shot him at
point-blank range. Philando Castile was shot and killed by police during a
traffic stop in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota. Both deaths were captured on
video and widely circulated on social media; Castile’s girlfriend was in the
car and livestreamed the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

But it wasn’t just
the images that drove the protests; it was a pervasive sense of injustice.

Police keep using
deadly force against people of color and are not held accountable, says Adrian
Elim, a head organizer for B.L.A.C.K. The departments investigate themselves,
only to conclude that the officers didn’t do anything wrong, he says. When
prosecutors — local and federal — present the cases to grand juries, the jurors
often decline to indict the officers.

People are hurting,
they are fed up, and they running out of patience with a system they don’t
believe in anymore, Elim says.

“It doesn’t
matter with black people, we could have our hands up, they shoot us; we could
be pinned to the ground, they shoot us; we’re walking down the street, they
will shoot us; we’ll be playing in the park, they will shoot us; calling for
help, they will shoot us,” Elim says. “It doesn’t matter if we’re 5
years old, 12 years old, 80 years old, or 22 years old, nothing seems to stop
them. However, they always seem to, they manage not to kill white people every
day.”Elim’s point was reinforced early Saturday
morning by incidents in Texas and North Carolina.

Houston police say
that two officers spotted Alva Braziel, a black man, waving a revolver in the
air. They say that he ignored commands to put the gun down and pointed it at
the officers several times, which led to police shooting him. Some witnesses,
however, say that Braziel did not point the gun at officers, according to media
reports.

And then in Wake
County, North Carolina, a deputy was alerted to a man pointing a shotgun at
traffic. He found the man, William Bruce Ray, and wrestled the shotgun from
him, according to Raleigh TV station WNCN. Ray, who is white, then pulled out a
handgun, shot at the deputy, and missed. The deputy arrested Ray, who will
probably face an attempted murder charge, says WNCN.

Rochester police say that they’ve tried to build trust between officers and the communities they serve, including predominantly
black and Latino neighborhoods.

A big reason for the
department’s recent reorganization is so officers can strengthen ties to the
neighborhoods and engage in more proactive policing. The department is also
rolling out body cameras for officers in response to public demand and as a way
to be more transparent.

Rochester Police
Chief Michael Ciminelli said last week that lack of community trust is
discouraging. People don’t see all the time and effort that police put into
trying to build camaraderie with the community, he said, and many times, those
efforts do pay off.

“It’s very,
very troubling to hear people say they don’t trust the police,” he said.

Currently,
complaints against Rochester police officers are handled by the department’s
Professional Standards Section. If the complaints involve the use of force or
potential criminal behavior by a police officer, the PSS investigations are
then reviewed by a Civilian Review Board, which is run by the Center for
Dispute Settlement.

But many critics say
that the process isn’t good enough because in the end, the police chief can
overrule the board’s decisions. Critics such as the Rev. Lewis Stewart,
president of United Christian Leadership Ministry of Western New York, instead
want an independent civilian review board. The board would investigate
complaints and would have subpoena power.

“That is not a
panacea that’s going to address everything, but also it’s one of the tools in
the toolkit to help address that situation, to repair what’s broken,” Stewart
says.

The RPD is also under scrutiny for the way it ended Friday’s Black Lives Matter rally and march.

From the outset,
rally organizers were adamant that protestors needed to remain peaceful, even
while they moved around the city shutting down intersections. They blocked off
the downtown bus station during the evening commute, but the station had closed
in anticipation of the march.

Later, however, the
group blocked off roads in the East End. Ciminelli said that he and his command
staff decided to break up the demonstration for several reasons: the group was
blocking a busy intersection, the department had deployed so many officers that
patrols weren’t available to respond to other calls, and people coming out of
the bars were starting verbal confrontations with the protestors.

Organizers decided
to block roads for a couple of reasons. Partly, it was to make people pay
attention and to show them that the demonstrators will not accept continued use
of undue force by police against people of color. They also wanted to show
people that they have power.

“We need
consciousness sparked,” said Douglass, one of the organizers. “We need ideas
sparked.

Police ultimately
arrested 76 people — not all were protesters, reportedly — and charged them
with disorderly conduct; three of those people were also charged with resisting
arrest. But police also detained two black WHAM reporters, Carlet Cleare and
Justin Carter.

Cleare
and Carter were part of a group of journalists recording a woman loudly voicing
her concerns about the police response, says a WHAM statement. Police arrested
the woman and the reporters all moved to the sidewalk. Cleare and Carter, who
were the only black journalists in the group, were suddenly and without warning
handcuffed and led away, WHAM says.

Ciminelli
ordered their release when he learned what happened. And he and Mayor Lovely
Warren apologized to the journalists.

“Once we
understand what happened, we will try to reach out and see if we can prevent
that from happening again,” Ciminelli said.

RPD and WHAM
representatives met Monday and had an “honest and productive discussion,”
according to a tweet from the station’s general
manager, Chuck Samuels.

This article appears in Jul 13-19, 2016.