DEVELOPMENTS
• New York legislators said Friday they plan to introduce a bill that would force prosecutors to release grand jury proceedings, such as those in the case of the officer investigated in the death of Eric Garner. Grand jury proceedings are, by practice, kept secret.
• The family of an unarmed black drug suspect fatally shot by a white Phoenix police officer expressed frustration Friday that an independent investigator was not present at an autopsy and accused authorities of not being transparent. Attorney Marci Kratter said the family of Rumain Brisbon, 34,was “devastated and frustrated” that the medical examiner’s office would not wait until Saturday, when their expert would have been available. Nora Brisbon, however, said she doesn’t want people to focus on the fact her son was black. “This had nothing to do with race,” Nora Brisbon told The Arizona Republic. “This is about Rumain and the wrong that was done to him, and I want people to focus on that. If they want to rally, let’s support him positively.”
• The family of a 12-year-old shot dead by a Cleveland police officer who mistook the boy’s pellet gun for a real weapon filed a wrongful death lawsuit Friday. They said the two officers acted recklessly when they confronted the boy in a terrifying manner and fired within seconds.
— From news services
More than 100 people gathered at the capitol in Jefferson City, chanting the now-familiar phrase “hands up, don’t shoot” and carrying signs protesting Brown’s death. A civil rights group has asked that Gov. Jay Nixon appoint a special prosecutor to examine Brown’s case after a St. Louis County grand jury, like the one in New York, chose not to indict the officer who shot him.
A similar protest was held in the city’s iconic Macy’s department store.
In Phoenix, a crowd marched to City Hall Thursday to protest the shooting death of yet another unarmed black man, Rumain Brisbon, 34, by a white city police officer.
According to a police account, the officer, who was not identified, said he was investigating a report of drug sales from an SUV on Tuesday when he found Brisbon in the vehicle. He said Brisbon fled into a nearby apartment, where the two struggled.
During the scuffle, police said, the officer saw Brisbon put his left hand in his pocket.The officer grabbed onto the hand and thought he felt a gun handle in the pocket. He then shot Brisbon twice in the torso, killing him, according to the police account.
The item in Brisbon’s pocket turned out to be a bottle containing oxycodone tablets, police said. A semiautomatic handgun and a jar containing marijuana were found in the SUV.
Community leaders called off protests planned for Friday night because of threats of violence against both sides. Instead, the leaders said they would call a community meeting Monday at a local church.
Elsewhere on Friday, demonstrations spread. In suburban New York City, about 65 demonstrators lay down on a street corner in protest. Among them were Jason Walker of Atlanta, in New York for a wedding, and his 3-year-old daughter, Jaidyn. She told her father she wanted to lie down when the demonstrators did, and she remained on the sidewalk among them for the full 7 minutes, occasionally covering her eyes.
In New Haven, Conn., home of Yale University, hundreds of demonstrators marched from the law school to the courthouse. In New Jersey, dozens of students from Rutgers University walked through New Brunswick, slowing downtown rush-hour traffic to a crawl and forcing the city to postpone a tree lighting ceremony scheduled at Monument Square.
In Colorado, students walked out of class. In Aurora, a suburb of Denver, eighth-grader Bennie Mahonda walked about 5 miles to the municipal center, shouting “Hands up, don’t shoot!” to honks from passing cars. She had her parents’ permission but promised her mother she would return to class after the demonstration, which she called “social studies outside of class.”
“It makes us kids feel unsafe, that we’re outsiders, enemies of society,” Bennie, who is black, said of the decisions by the grand juries in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.
In Florida, activists marched through the streets of midtown Miami and blocked a major causeway connecting Miami to Miami Beach. In Providence, several hundred people blocked downtown streets, while city police had to stop some protesters from walking onto Interstate 95 on Friday night.
Except for those last week in Ferguson, where several buildings and cars were burned, the protests have been mostly peaceful, though there have been occasional arrests.
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