Activists staying until officer fired
Group spent night in tents outside Albany police station
They sat in a small circle in the middle of the deserted street, switching conversation between ordering food to sustain their days-long stakeout, and recounting what happened to them Wednesday night.
Kiera Fitzgerald was one of dozens of activists at the Black Lives Matter protest at the Albany Police Department South Station. She was in the crowd as the protest escalated into a confrontation with police after an officer smacked a protester’s light out of his hand. She was there when the same officer later pushed at Chandler Hickenbottom’s megaphone, causing her to fall back and chip her tooth. She watched women get dragged, she said, and other protesters get sprayed in the face repeatedly with pepper spray.
The 30-year-old has lived in Albany her entire life. And she has never seen anything like it outside of last summer’s protest, she said.
“They literally attacked us like we were animals,” Fitzgerald said. “So we decided to come back to stand our ground because things need to change and if we don’t keep coming back, it’s just gonna get swept under the rug.”
So activists returned to the scene of Wednesday’s clash, demanding officers be held accountable for what they described as excessive force — and specifically for the officer who pushed the light and megaphone out of protesters’ hands to get fired. Protesters wrote his name in chalk outside the station, but Albany police have not released his name.
“If you can’t control yourself with somebody yelling on a bullhorn, how can you control yourself when there’s a serious situation going on?” Fitzgerald said. “How are you going to have enough control to not kill one of us?”
On Friday, police shared new video clips of the South Station confrontation from officers’ body camera footage. Police Chief Eric Hawkins described the scene as the South Station being under siege, and that “officers are not engaging these individuals out front at this point. What you’re seeing here is totally without provocation from any officers.”
But video footage by a protester obtained by the Times Union showed that when officers began to retreat inside the building, one opened the door, quickly smacked a handheld light out of protester Adam Walker’s hands, and shut the door again — immediately spurring more intense yelling from the crowd.
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan compared the South Station protesters’ behavior to that of President Donald Trump supporters who fought to get inside the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6. Activists expressed shock at the comment, and Sheehan later apologized for making the comparison.
On Sunday, a handful of activists sat on the street and in lawn chairs in front of the South Station, both ends of the street blocked off by parked police cars. Chalk art on the walls and street surrounded them:
“The police began as a slave catching task force.” “Stop killing people.” People had also written insults in chalk on the station’s outer walls that said “pig pen” and “oink oink piggy.”
A few hours prior, tents were in front of the station, where activists slept as they spent the night out in front of the building. Sunday’s afternoon group had just switched shifts with the overnighters, gearing up with coffee and takeout to fuel them for the next few hours.
Renewed demonstrations against police brutality started Wednesday as a way to express grief and frustration with the death of yet another Black man by the hands of police, as news spread of Daunte Wright’s killing in Minneapolis by a white officer.
But it was also grief and frustration over similar incidents that have happened in their own communities: the Albany police shooting that paralyzed Ellazar Williams in 2018, the Troy shooting of Dahmeek Mcdonald in 2017, the shooting and killing of Nah-cream Moore in 2011.
“Anytime we come to speak out, ‘It’s a riot,’ — when it’s not. We just want justice,” said Tasheca Medina, founder and executive director of Troy 4 Equality. “After Wednesday, if that didn’t happen, we probably wouldn’t be out here right now.”
“(The pepper spray) is a huge, huge concern of mine,” Medina continued.
She gestured to her left, where Brandon Brown sat in a lawn chair, pointing to the burn scabs around his nose. Protesters think police were using bear spray, which the Washington Post has noted is more pressurized and stronger.
When asked if the police department uses bear spray, spokesman Steve Smith said it uses oleoresin capsicum, which is the generic chemical term for pepper spray.
In a separate statement, Smith tweeted that while Albany police supports the right to protest, they also must be able to provide services to the rest of the Albany community.
“Residents and visitors to our city must be able to safely access public streets, buildings and emergency services,” he wrote. “We remain committed to ensuring that participants in front of the South Station have a space to make their voices heard, but ask that they do so in a way that’s lawful and does not impact public safety or the needs of our community.”
The activists don’t have plans to leave anytime soon, they said.
“They’re going to have to meet every last one of our demands. Until then, we’re not going,” Brown said. “I’ll be damned if my child’s fighting the same s—.”