About 75 people sang, marched, and chalked messages on sidewalksWednesday night in downtown Rockford. Their protest was part of a national demonstration against police brutality.
If there’s still a chalk outline of a body out in front of the Winnebago County jail this morning, that’s Sterling Blackmon. It’s supposed to remind everyone walking into the jail today that it’s time for a national discussion on race and policing.
“This incident in Ferguson has put the United States on the map in a bad way,” says Blackmon, “People who don’t even speak English have a universal sign now for peace: hands off, don’t shoot.”
The crowd marched a few blocks to the federal courthouse, to show the importance of federal investigations in police-related shootings.
Rev. Matthew Johnson is with the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockford and helped organize the march. He says he’d like to see law enforcement work harder to address racism in their institutions.
“Don’t escalate. Take a step back. Don’t assume somebody’s a criminal," Johnson says, "because you are just going to ramp up the situation. And then incidents like the killing of Mike Brown are going to happen, or the killing of Mark Anthony Barmore. Call the negotiator. Take a step back. And that could do a lot of good.”
Mark Barmore was brought up a number of times during the rally: he was shot and killed by Rockford police officers five years ago in a church’s daycare center.
Anti-police brutality demonstrations were held in more than 60 cities last night, focusing on the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., this summer.
