Several hundred people rallied in City Heights on Friday night, marching to protest the fatal police shootings of Alton Streling in Louisiana on July 5 and Philando Castile in Minnesota on July 6.
There were no reports of arrests or violence during the protest, which included briefly blocking traffic on southbound Interstate 15.
From the Union-Tribune:
Demonstrators walked down the on-ramp from University Avenue about 8 p.m. and halted vehicles for about 10 minutes. According to a CalTrans San Diego tweet, the southbound lanes were shut down for about 30 minutes, presumably while people cleared.
The crowd had gathered near the City Heights Weingart Library and marched north on Fairmount Avenue, west on El Cajon Boulevard, south on 39th Street and west onto the on-ramp.
After moving up the ramp, the protestors headed east on University, then south on Fairmount to the San Diego police station at Landis Street. Outside the precinct, they held a sit-in and later voiced concerns and opinions about police brutality and racism.
From NBC7:
Marchers said the culture of how police treat people of color needs to change.
“I want everyone to be treated fairly across the board,” explained Sammie Scales. I don’t want my heart rate to change when the police pull up behind me. I don’t want to get nervous.”
“Current police brutality and people being murdered by police recently is not a matter of individual decisions by police acting rationally and according to procedure,” said Jordan Mills, a member of the Party for Socialism and l Liberation and a college professor.
“We think it’s built into the system. That, in fact, there is structural racism in the United States,” Mills added.
These photographs were sent to us by Oren Robinson, with Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) San Diego Chapter.
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Police need to be better trained to lighten up in confrontations which are always tense to begin with. Nobody likes to be pulled over when they are on their way somewhere especially if they have to be somewhere on time. So the confrontation is tense to begin with.
The Alton Sperling situation should never have happened. It’s not worth taking a life over selling CDs or cigarettes as Eric Garner was doing. Those cops should be disciplined if not prosecuted. Nobody should be shot at just for running away. When will these cops ever learn?
What they “need” to do and what will happen are two different things. After what happened in Baton Rouge, don’t plan on the police lightening up or any city, county or state governments expecting them to. Not only will cops be more on edge and willing to draw and pull the trigger, they will likely get away with it even easier than they have been already. And that will only create more general animosity towards cops in general and we will see more violence against them. BLM supporters and police supporters are pointing fingers at each other and the hatred is exploding. We’ve reached a point where it doesn’t make a s**t bit of difference who’s right or wrong. I have no optimism.
You are right. You have no optimism. It has been reported that suburban police departments are undertrained compared to the big city departments like Dallas’. You have to try and improve the situation if at all possible and not just throw up your hands and say(your position) that nothing can be done and it’s only going to get worse.
What can I say? Its just not there. Hopefully things will some day get better but I think it will get much worse before that happens.
Good on you, John, and c.j. and Groucho. Some others in this column seem to advocate shutting up and just moving on.
Reading former SDPD assistant chief, and former Seattle Police Department chief, Norm Stamper’s excellent book,To Protect and to Serve: How to Fix America’s Police,” would be an excellent first step.
I find it helps to know who the people are in your community. I know the community service police officer for University Heights (officer Hall). It helps to know your council representative. In my case its Todd Gloria (and staffer Mr. Granda) and soon to be Chris Ward.
Being involved, interested and engaged will help you to develop a rapport with those directly involved in your life.
Again my pessimism is there. Aside from what Groucho said, I think supporters on both sides of the police vs BLM need to be more understanding and tolerant of each other. Police supporters need to understand that BLM is NOT anti-police. BLM critics need to understand that the BLM movement is NOT implying that nonblack lives don’t matter or that black lives matter more than others. Likewise, BLM supporters should not automatically assume that everyone who questions or doesn’t understand the concept and intent of BLM is racist.
Good on you, Chris. You found some ways to improve our situation.