KINGSTON >> A group of more than 50 people rallied outside Kingston City Hall on Tuesday afternoon to protest the lack of an indictment against a Missouri police officer who was accused of killing an unarmed black teenager.
Chanting “Hands up. Don’t shoot,” and “Racist violence has to stop. Prosecute the killer cop,” participants said they were protesting police abuse and petitioning Ulster County law enforcement officials to undergo extended cultural sensitivity training. They also said they wanted local law enforcement officials to engage in community policing.
“What we’re doing in support of the Brown family, and in support around the country, that we’re fed up with the way police abuse is taking place, specifically in the black community,” rally coordinator Odell Winfield said. He said the rally participants wanted to acknowledge that police abuse is happening in Kingston and that it needs to end everywhere.
Winfield, one of the founders of “End the New Jim Crow Action Network,” also said he wants the community to know they have a choice in their police force. He said law enforcement could be doing more community policing and “not military occupation.” Winfield said he wants the police to know that just because a house is abandoned, it is not necessarily a drug den. And just because a group of kids is on the street corner, does not mean they are in a gang, he said.
Kingston is small enough that people know each other, Winfield said. He also said he was not calling the police the enemy, but stating that there is a better way for them to protect and serve.
“And you don’t have to protect and serve with a tank,” Winfield said.
Protests and looting broke out in Ferguson, Missouri after it was announced Monday evening that a grand jury had decided not to indict officer Darren Wilson, who is white, in the Aug. 9 death of Michael Brown. The protests were more destructive than any of those that followed Brown’s death, with more than a dozen businesses badly damaged or destroyed, according to the Associated Press. The AP reported that authorities said they heard hundreds of gunshots, which, for a time, prevented fire crews from fighting the blazes.
Maude Bruce, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Ellenville, said she understood how the Brown family felt. She said they felt like their son’s life was taken for nothing and that the police officer who killed Brown should be prosecuted and serve time for committing murder.
“Let me tell you, I feel like that’s the only way that will stop them from killing our black boys,” Bruce said, addressing the crowd at Tuesday’s rally.
Bruce said her own son, Jimmy Bruce Jr., was killed Dec. 13, 1986 outside a movie theater after he was put in a choke hold by a police officer. She said that officer was never prosecuted.
Bruce said police officers who do such things need to serve time. She also said the prosecutor in the Brown case prosecuted the victim, rather than the police officer.
“We need to organize,” SUNY New Paltz student Maria Iskaros said during the rally.
Fellow student Nia Nelson said the two were at the event because they are “really passionate about social justice.” She said their college campus is usually quiet about this kind of thing, but a spontaneous rally took place Monday evening that was organized by members of the Black Student Union utilizing social media. That rally went all over the campus and into town and was a peaceful protest, Nelson said.
“We had a really great turnout,” Nelson said. She added that the event at the college, like Tuesday’s rally, was to protest the lack of an indictment against Wilson.
