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Report for America is a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities.

Protesters Stage Sit-In And Call for Name Of Officer

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Outside of Rockford City Hall

 

 

A group of protesters have been camped outside of Rockford City Hall since Sunday, calling for officials to release the name of the officer who shot a man several times in the back last Friday. 

 

Skye Gia Garcia is an activist and camped outside of the City Hall. She said, “The opportunity is here for the community to humanize someone instead of criminalize them and dehumanize them.”

 

Tyris Jones, 21, is reportedly in critical condition. Jones was wanted on charges of aggravated discharge of a firearm and two separate warrants related to domestic battery. When police attempted a traffic stop, Jones fled the scene before crashing his vehicle and attempting to flee on foot. The officer then discharged five shots at Jones, several of which hit his back. 

 

The Winnebago-Boone County Integrity Task Force is the investigative agency which oversees  the investigation into the shooting, following protocol for review of in-custody deaths and uses of deadly force.

 

The Rockford police officer who shot a fleeing Jones on Friday has been identified as Dominik McNiece.

 

 

  • Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco is a 2020 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project which is a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms.

Juanpablo covers environmental, substandard housing and police-community relations. He’s been a bilingual facilitator at the StoryCorps office in Chicago. As a civic reporting fellow at City Bureau, a non-profit news organization that focuses on Chicago’s South Side, Ramirez-Franco produced print and audio stories about the Pilsen neighborhood. Before that, he was a production intern at the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the rural America editorial intern at In These Times magazine. Ramirez-Franco grew up in northern Illinois. He is a graduate of Knox College.