It may have been an “escalation.” But by all accounts, it was a peaceful one.
Atlanta police say they made only one arrest during Friday night's march through downtown to protest the recent officer-involved fatal shootings of two black men in North Carolina and Oklahoma. An unidentified person was cited for the offense of being in a roadway as a pedestrian during the four-hour-plus event, in which about 450 people marched from the National Center for Civil and Human Rights to Atlanta Police Department headquarters.
In between, they made a stop at The King Center on Auburn Avenue, where Ebenezer Baptist Church Senior Pastor Rev. Raphael Warnock told the group, “Police brutality is just a deadly consequence of mass incarceration.”
“The protests were peaceful,” police spokesman Lukasz Sajdak said in an email Saturday.
Indeed, the department had already said as much on social media.
"Peaceful protests," read a tweet sent out late Friday by Atlanta police. "We must continue to work to bridge the gap so our nation is a better place."
The march was organized to call attention to the deaths of Terence Crutcher and Keith Scott – and to send a pointed message that people are fed up with such tragedies, according to organizers.
“Black people have witnessed people do violence to them and (the offender) be protected by law enforcement,” NAACP Chapter President Francys Johnson said at a news conference Friday before the protest.
“It is in fact an escalation,” he said. “We aren’t asking anymore. We’re demanding.”
Tulsa officer Betty Shelby was charged with manslaughter Thursday in the shooting death of Crutcher, who was unarmed. She turned herself in to authorities Friday.
Scott’s widow released cellphone footage of the Charlotte incident Friday. The video does not indicate if Scott had a gun at the time.
More protests reportedly will take place in Atlanta this weekend, including one Saturday that will use silence to speak volumes. An “Atl Silent Protest” will start at 2 p.m at the Lenox MARTA station, then move on to the Peachtree Center Station at 7 p.m.
In social media posts, organizers say they will wear black and substitute silence for shouts and chants in order to draw attention to the shootings of black men by police.
Photos: Activists in Atlanta protest police shootings: http://www.ajc.com/gallery/news/local/photos-activists-atlanta-protest-police-shootings/gCdFt/
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