“This board is illegitimate!”
The delay, said BYP100 organizer Damon Williams, “is an assertion of power to prove to the community that . . . our demands don’t matter. It seems to invalidate our presence.”
The sentiment was echoed by activists who took the microphone. Among their demands: an elected police board, the redirection of funds from the police department to schools and clinics, and Servin’s dismissal.
Outside police headquarters, the activists joined hands in solidarity. Among those in attendance were people whose loved ones were harmed by a police force that, demonstrators say, doesn’t care about the loss of black life. Martinez Sutton, Boyd’s brother, has become a fixture at these meetings and protests. A man who identified himself as representative of Bettie Jones, who was shot and killed the day after Christmas in what police admitted was an “accident,” said officers had no respect for her life. Shapearl Wells, the mother of Courtney Copeland, who was killed this month but whose shooter remains unknown, said police had not done enough to find his killer.
