Editors Note: The following is a letter written by a National Lawyer’s Guild legal observer and eyewitness to the protests in Detroit this past weekend, to the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners.
An Open Letter to Detroit Board of Police Commissioners
Re: Police Riot on Sunday, August 23
I am a wife, mother of four and PhD student at WSU, residing in Macomb County. Legal observing is one of several activities I engage in as those responsibilities allow. As a volunteer, trained and registered Legal Observer, I choose events that fit my schedule. Last week, Detroit Will Breathe’s Saturday night demonstration fit my schedule. Requests span a range of topics, and police have provided a professional presence at most or all the other protests I have attended. The Detroit Will Breathe organization requested observers from the National Lawyers Guild from Saturday, August 22, at 7 pm until Sunday, August 23, beginning at the McNamara Court House and ending at Woodward Ave. between Grand River and John R. On Sunday, the city of Detroit inflicted harm on me, fellow legal observers, press and unarmed civilians posing no threat to the city in order to prevent peaceful assembly of citizens, and prevent legal observation. According to newspaper accounts, a medic was harmed in order to prevent him from delivering medical care, and residents who live near the location of the event were harmed in order to prevent them from helping victims of violence escape to a safe space.
Witnessing the City of Detroit launch an assault on civilians was traumatic for me. In every direction I looked, men armed in riot gear were kicking, stomping, beating, and physically hurting people. It was a bloody Sunday.
I felt I was on Pettus Bridge. I never in my life imagined I would personally witness such police brutality. The City was looking for any excuse. Any excuse to swing. Any excuse to hit. Any excuse at all, and the level of violence to the innocent and unarmed civilians seemed to generate a sense of professional pleasure in the abusers.
I was present as a legal observer for the entirety of the march. Until the police engaged the protest group I was observing for, there were a variety of people attending, including people and vehicles of the white supremacist sort. With the recent videos of police in Lansing, Kalamazoo, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, and Kenosha, seeming to welcome, happily engage with and support hate groups, and the subsequent death that has resulted from it, the presence of hate agitators caused anxiety and disappointment. The City of Detroit escorted Nazis through a peaceful LGBTQ Pridefest, last year. Why is the City of Detroit engaging with hate groups and participating in white supremacist tactics? Does the City of Detroit feel fully capable of policing without doing so? With evidence of national cooperation between hate groups and police, the City of Detroit’s recent history of supporting hate groups, and after witnessing what I saw with my own eyes, I feel real concern that professional anger at demonstrator demands encourages poorly trained police units to make even worse choices on behalf of the City of Detroit, than ever before. It seems that on behalf of the City of Detroit, the police wish to make a professional statement that peaceful assembly will not be allowed, and that terror and open war on citizens trumps the audacity to peacefully assemble.
The City approached the demonstrators, from behind riot shields, fully armored from head to toe. I watched the unarmed demonstrators standing in the light, shoulder to shoulder, singing “Put down your riot gear, there is no riot here”. I then watched your officers rush in and immediately begin punching, kicking, hitting with batons and macing citizens of all ages, standing unarmed. When I close my eyes, I can still see them. I can still see the blood on the street in the aftermath.
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