From Baltimore to Atlanta, Repercussions of Protests Against Police Being Felt

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Waves of protests against and even violence in response to alleged police brutality and racism towards members of minority communities, particularly African Americans, has erupted in cities across the country.

Long-held beliefs are being challenged and new activists are sprouting up across the United States and globally, seeking an end to the perceived racial bias American law enforcement carries against non-white groups.

In New York City, the strangulation of black man Eric Garner by a white police officer attempting to arrest Garner for selling individual cigarettes caused a firestorm of emotion when a grand jury in Long Island decided not to indict the officer seen on camera using an illegal restraining technique, despite Garner’s claims that he couldn’t breathe.

In the wake of Garner’s death and the subsequent failure to indict the officer, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio said that he had spoken to his biracial son on several occasions about the way police may treat him if he ever encounters them.

“...I have had to talk to Dante for years about the danger that he may face … how to take special care in any encounters he has with the police officers who are there to protect him,” DeBlasio said in a December press conference, according to the New York Daily News.

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In Baltimore, outrage and civil disobedience focuses on the death of black man Freddie Gray, who was detained by police after he ran from them and placed in a police van after officers said they found an illegal knife on him. Gray allegedly suffered severe injuries during transport and died a week later while still in custody.

Gray was taken into custody in the 1700 block of Presbury Street in west Baltimore at 8:40 a.m. on Sunday, April 12, after he made “eye contact” with officers and then ran away, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said on April 20. He was chased two blocks before an officer said over the radio that the individual was in custody, according to police.

“Part of the investigation is digging deeper into that,” Batts continued. “There is no law against running.”

Court documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun indicate Gray had a switchblade inside his front pants pocket.

“We know that having a knife is not necessarily a crime,” Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. “It is not necessarily probable cause to chase someone. We still have questions.”

The fallout from the incidents in Baltimore, New York, and towns like North Charleston, SC, where a white police officer is facing murder charges for shooting a fleeing black man in the back during a traffic stop, has even spread to Atlanta, a city which prides itself on its relatively harmonious police-minority relationship.

A watchdog organization which focuses on the Atlanta Police Department is ending its “don’t run from police” billboard campaign after getting tough feedback from City Hall.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, members of the Atlanta City Council Public Safety Committee (PSC) did not agree with the Atlanta Citizen Review Board’s (ACRB) message, some city council members even saying that they encourage their sons to run from police if ever confronted by them. An ACRB spokeswoman told the AJC that she the PSC’s stance on the issue lacked common sense.

The campaign was designed to remind residents that running from police, while not an illegal act in and of itself, automatically makes police suspicious, and officers may use force to catch people who run from them or may use force once they’ve caught them; an ACRB investigator told the AJC that the board is aware of at least one incident where a man was beaten and charged with obstruction after he ran from police for no reason other than fear.

A statement released by ACRB on Wednesday announced the formal suspension of the program and the cancellation of a Thursday afternoon press conference which was to kick off the campaign.

“Unfortunately, a few Atlanta City Council members and some community members believed that this commonsense approach was an attempt to blame the victims of police misconduct without focusing on the police actions. This is farthest from the truth,” the statement read in part. ”This is a proactive Campaign to help educate the public and curtail injuries from police encounters and to encourage citizens to use the processes in place to address police misconduct.”