|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
Seattle - Police Shooting of Black man and Protests |
Current rating: 0 |
by anonymous
(No verified email address) |
04 Jun 2001
|
|
More protests to follow... |
Protesters gathered Friday at the intersection of 23rd and Union, where a police shooting of an unarmed black man occurred Thursday night.
In response to Seattle police fatally shooting an unarmed black man on Thursday night, residents of the Central District took to the streets in protest Friday, at the intersection of 23rd and Union streets, where the shooting occurred. Approximately 50 protesters blocked the intersection, holding signs with messages such as, "Another black man killed. Do you care?" and "You can’t kill all of us."
Around 12:30 p.m. the protesters succeeded in stopping a semi truck midway through the intersection, thus completely blocking Union street for approximately 3 hours, while large concrete planters were taken from a nearby plaza to block traffic traveling along 23rd.
The protest had symbolic significance for those involved, according to one protester, who said the man killed had been his friend. He said of the protest action, "We had to do this. I didn’t want to live here anymore if we didn’t do this."
The protest started Friday morning. Around 3 p.m. a police force arrived en masse to clear the streets. Police completely surrounded the perimeter of the protest with police cars and unmarked police sedans. A few police were seen to retrieve what looked like machine guns from the trunk of a police sedan. One bystander voiced his disapproval of the police "using military tactics on the public."
Eventually, people moved to the sidewalks. Police on horseback rode in from from the perimeter to secure the area, the semi was driven away and traffic started to flow once more through the intersection. Protesters remained on the sidewalk of the intersection for several more hours, holding signs, with several cars honking in support as they drove by.
This police killing is the latest in a series of police actions which have drawn fire from the Seattle community. Recently, King county was forced by a binding arbitration hearing to rehire an officer fired after pepper spraying two women without provocation during the WTO protests that occurred in late 1999. In late February, a police car which, according to witnesses, was running a red light without lights or sirens, struck and killed a bicyclist on Aurora Avenue in North Seattle. The police officer involved was cleared of wrongdoing.
Also see the SF IMC Police Brutality and Prisons website:
http://sf.indymedia.org/features/police/ |
See also:
http://seattle.indymedia.org/
|
