NEW YORK (AA) – Demonstrators flooded the streets of York City late Thursday, marching against police brutality in the wake of three consecutive days of fatal police-involved shootings that claimed the lives of young black men across the country.
Police arrested nearly one dozen protesters after crowds converged on Times Square as the march moved from Union Square Park, the epicenter of Thursday’s demonstrations.
Protesters, most of them young, chanted “Don’t Shoot, Hands Up” and “No Justice No Peace, Racist Police” as they marched in support of the victims of the shootings, before a broader “Black Lives Matter” chant caught on, growing louder and faster, a sign of boiling frustration readily expressed nationwide.
The New York march was similar to ones played out across the country, including Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas after Philando Castile, 31, was fatally shot during a traffic stop in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Video recorded moments after he was shot was live-streamed by his girlfriend who said Castile did nothing wrong and was reaching for documents requested by the police officer when he was shot.
Castile’s death was on the heels of another shooting, that of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was selling CDs outside of a convenience store early Tuesday before an encounter with two white officers turned deadly.
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into that case.
And at the beginning of the week, Delrawn Small was shot dead by an off-duty New York City police office following an altercation.
On Thursday, crowds carried banners that featured slogans such as “I’m not afraid of ISIS, I’m afraid of COPS”, “Take the Path of Most Resistance” to rally the crowds and “Police Your Racism”.
Steven Shryock, 64, carried a placard that said “They Rarely Shoot Old White Guys Like Me”.
Shryock accused police of going on a “hunt” and described the system as racist.
“In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the city is 75 percent white and every person the police department killed in the last five years is a person of color,” he said.
Stanley Fritz, 29, who works for the grassroots organization, Citizen Action of New York, that seeks ways to combat social, economic and environmental injustice, said concrete action was needed to change “this racist complex that America is.
“Marches, rallies, protests, those are always the easiest part of it because all you do is be present,” Fritz said. “We are going to need people actively there, every single day, standing up, fighting, losing more times than they win and not giving up.”
Fritz also has an idea of what he wants to see in the future: A black child in her car stopped by an officer, given a ticket and protesting the fine with few curse words. “And that’s the end of the conversation.”
