Protest is for locals only as Tacoma mourns the black men it’s lost at the hands of police
Fueled with anger and empowered by the call to justice, hundreds of people gathered at Wapato Lake Park Tuesday evening to remember young black men who died during recent encounters with Tacoma and Lakewood police.
“This demonstration today isn’t about George Floyd,” speaker Thrett Brown told the crowd. “This isn’t about anyone outside of Tacoma. This is about the situations that occurred right here in Tacoma.”
The nation has been wracked with unrest following the death of Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis on May 25.
At Tuesday’s event, Katrina Johnson spoke to the many young people in the crowd.
“We are not fighting for them,” Johnson said of the men memorialized on numerous signs held by the crowd. “They are already dead. We are fighting for you.”
The Tacoma woman is the cousin of Charleena Lyles, a pregnant mother shot by Seattle police in 2017.
“Welcome to the fight,” Johnson said. “You’ve got to join us. Because tomorrow, if nothing happens, another family will join us.”
Johnson implored the crowd not to engage in violence.
“I understand your anger,” she said. “But we have to do better than that.”
During the protest held just outside a Tacoma police substation, passing cars honked almost continuously in support.
“I want to tell my young people that you are more than a hashtag,” organizer Devitta Briscoe told the gathered crowd. “You deserve to breathe and you deserve to live.”
Briscoe helps runs a website, notthistime.global, that seeks to reduce police violence.
Some of the multiracial crowd carried signs with messages. “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” read one. Another said, “Justice 4 Bennie.” Bennie Branch was one of the men remembered at the event.
Brown said black people can only do so much to end racism and social injustice.
“It’s your responsibility,” he told white people in the crowd. “Black people shouldn’t be in the streets protesting. We should be healing.”
But protest they did, walking from Wapato Park to Pacific Avenue where they took over the intersection by kneeling, raising their hands and chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
Nearby, an armed security guard stood next to his vehicle, blocking the entrance to a marijuana store’s parking lot. The protesters paid him no attention.
Other bystanders seemed awed by the group, filming the crowd with cell phones and in some cases, joining in.
Police shut down streets as the crowd, which doubled in size along the way, made its way back to the park. But every time the group neared an intersection, police left in an apparent deescalation maneuver.
The group remained peaceful during their march.
Family members of several of the men spoke during the bookend rallies. One was Fred Thomas, whose son, Leonard, was killed by police in a 2013 while clutching his 4-year-old son during a SWAT standoff.
“Our son Leonard was unarmed. He never threatened himself, his son or the police,” Thomas said. “In fact after I told them I could get him out alive, they handcuffed me and took me to jail.”
Pierce County prosecutors found Leonard’s death justified to protect the child, but after his family sued, a jury in U.S. District Court found police committed 14 civil rights violations that night, including excessive force.
One of the police officers involved in the standoff, Mike Wiley, led an assault team that blew down the back door of the home and killed the family dog. His actions were singled out in the ruling as being particularly egregious and leading to Thomas’s unnecessary death.
Thomas’s family was awarded $12.5 million.
On May 1, Said Joquin, 26, was fatally shot during a traffic stop in Lakewood after allegedly running a stop sign.
Wiley, who made the traffic stop, later said he noticed a gun on the driver’s side floorboard and requested backup.
Before more police arrived, Joquin “lowered his arms, causing the primary officer (Wiley) to believe the subject was reaching for the firearm,” investigators said. Police said a gun was recovered from Joquin’s vehicle.
Thomas said Tuesday he was speechless when he learned of Wiley’s involvement in Joquin’s death.
“It stopped me in my tracks,” Thomas said. “I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t formulate my words.”
Thomas’s grandson, now 11, is trying to process the recent events in Minneapolis and around the country.
“He’s trying to deal with it, too,” Thomas said. “It ain’t easy right now. But, I can’t stay home. I want our voice to be heard.”
Brown told the crowd he was there to remember Branch and Manuel Ellis, another man killed by police.
Branch, 24, was killed Sept. 8 after being pulled over by a Tacoma officer on Portland Avenue.
After an altercation with Officer Ryan Bradley, Branch was shot multiple times and died at the scene.
Investigators have not said why police shot Branch, but said the man had warrants out for his arrest and an Airsoft gun was found at the scene.
Branch was allegedly checking on his mother, who was homeless, when police stopped him. She spoke Tuesday.
“They killed my baby,” she told the crowd. “They did it right in front of me.”
Ellis, 33, died March 3, hours after leaving a church revival.
Police said he approached a patrol car at the intersection of 96th Street South and Ainsworth Avenue and repeatedly struck the vehicle.
When the two officers got out of their vehicle, they said Ellis attacked them and struggled for several moments before being handcuffed.
Within a minute of firefighters arriving on scene, Ellis stopped breathing and lost consciousness.
This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 7:11 AM.
