March on Manchester PD

Protesters target Thin Blue Line flag flying over police department.

Carrying signs denouncing racism and brutality, about 60 protesters marched through Manchester on Saturday afternoon to demand change in the town’s police department.

The rally was held to protest the police killing of Jose Soto last April, and condemned how officers handled a disturbance call last weekend that ended with the arrest of a Black hotel guest.

The crowd marched to police headquarters to demand the town remove the Thin Blue Line flag that flies overhead.

“Take the flag down — the people have spoken,” organizer Keren Prescott yelled into a megaphone, drawing a chant from the crowd.

Prescott, the leader of PowerUp Manchester, said the flag — meant as a symbol of solidarity in law enforcement — came to represent violence and sedition at the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“We associate that flag with treason,” she said, arguing that pro-police demonstrators among the crowd had spent the summer promoting the Blue Lives Matter theme.

“But when they stormed the Capitol, they didn’t give an (expletive) about blue lives,” she said. “Yet somehow Black Lives Matter protesters are criminalized.”

Earlier, a small convoy of Manchester police cars escorted the protest march from the corner of Main and Center streets on the mile route to police headquarters. The corner has been the scene of frequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations since June, but Saturday’s was the largest since the start of the winter weather, participants said.

Protesters chanted along the march route and distributed small red flags calling on Connecticut to declare racism a public health threat.

Motorists either drove past with no reaction or honked in support, but protester Linda Blakesley of Coventry said there had been more negative responses last summer and leading up to the November election.

“There was definitely lots of support and beeping, but just as many people were revving their engines or finding other ways to show displeasure,” Blakesley said.

Activist James Flores, 65, traveled from Willimantic to take part.

“Black Lives Matter isn’t about Black people. It’s about justice for all, for everybody,” he said. “Black Lives Matter is a big umbrella for Black rights, women’s right, animal rights, environmental rights. It’s about justice.”

Protesters repeated their argument that police weren’t justified in shooting Soto last year. The 27-year-old was wanted for a parole violation and was shot outside his mother’s Oak Street home after parole officers tried to get him to surrender.

Manchester police fired at Soto because they reasonably believed he had a gun and was going to fire it, a state prosecutor determined in a report that cleared the officers of any wrongdoing. But Soto was carrying only a cellphone.

Protesters Saturday also argued that police mishandled a call Feb. 26 about a possible disturbance at the Hawthorn Suites by Wyndham. Police ended up in a dispute with Dwight Newton-Batchelor, 26, a Black man staying at the hotel with his family.

Officers ultimately led him out of his room in handcuffs as his children cried and his wife objected. Police said he was interfering with officers and repeatedly walked toward them carrying a broomstick.

But Prescott said he didn’t deserve to be arrested and said he would have been dealt with different if he were white.