Floyd protests continue in 4 Arkansas cities; ralliers call for change in law enforcement methods

Wanda V. Neal, president of the Pine Bluff Chapter of the NAACP, joined the national organization Wednesday in calling for federal legislation to outline procedures and penalties in cases of police brutality.
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Dale Ellis)
Wanda V. Neal, president of the Pine Bluff Chapter of the NAACP, joined the national organization Wednesday in calling for federal legislation to outline procedures and penalties in cases of police brutality. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Dale Ellis)

On the day after the funeral of George Floyd, people in at least four Arkansas cities called for changes in how police handle people of color.

In the shadow of a Confederate memorial statue, the Pine Bluff NAACP issued a call to action. The Jefferson County sheriff and the Pine Bluff police chief pledged that use-of-force policies would prohibit tactics that could lead to brutality. The police chief said he would issue an internal departmental order to forbid the use of chokeholds and kneeling restraints to subdue suspects.

In Little Rock, where demonstrators marched from the state Capitol to Chester Street and back, Pulaski County Sheriff Eric Higgins announced that deputies in his department will be required to intervene when they see their colleagues use excessive force.

At a march in Jacksonville, speakers talked about the pain they’ve endured because of police brutality, and they spoke of moving forward in a positive way.

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In Rogers — in the state’s predominantly white, northwest region — speakers chastised officials who did not attend Wednesday’s protest.

All of this came in the wake of the May 25 death of Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer held Floyd against the pavement with his knee in Floyd’s neck. Floyd’s death, captured on video, rocked the nation and resulted in two weeks of protests against police brutality.

Wednesday’s call for change in Arkansas started in Pine Bluff with a morning news conference by the Pine Bluff branch of the NAACP, which followed a call by the national NAACP for federal legislation to be developed that will provide detailed procedures and penalties in cases of police brutality.

At the Jefferson County Courthouse, the group issued a call to action for people concerned with police brutality toward people of color. Organizers held the news conference on the courthouse’s south side, in the shadow of the Confederate memorial statue that stands near the south entrance.

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“We want to open a dialogue with police and assist in developing policies that will dismantle senseless killings,” said Janice Roberts, a member of the local chapter’s executive and legal redress committees.

Henry “Hank” Wilkins V, related the story of his great-great-grandfather, Henry Wilkins Sr., who was born a slave during the Civil War and lived to the age of 104.

“Because of that fact I don’t have to look up historical records or documents to learn about his life,” Wilkins said. “I can speak to my aunts and uncles, my father, my grandmother, about the kind of man he was because he lived long enough for them to know and remember him. And every time I think about this I am astounded that I, a millennial black man, am only one generation, one degree of separation removed from his life.

“I’m astonished that I can speak to a living relative who touched the flesh of my great-great-grandfather, whose first breath was deemed to be the property of another human being.”

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Wilkins said it is that experience that drives home for him the reality of slavery in America.

“From 1619 when slaves were first brought to America to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, legally enforced racism has been administered on American soil,” he said. “For 345 years, all lives didn’t matter.”

Pine Bluff Police Chief Kelvin Sergeant and Jefferson County Sheriff Lafayette Woods Jr. pledged to ensure that their departmental use-of-force policies would not allow tactics that could lead to brutality against citizens. Sergeant said he would issue an order before the end of the day to forbid the use of chokeholds and kneeling restraints on the part of officers as a means of subduing suspects.

Sergeant said that when he joined the Pine Bluff Police Department in 1995, there were 13 black officers on the force, and his hire came about because of affirmative action.

“I was considered an affirmative action employee,” he said. “I was considered to be inferior.”

After 25 years on the police force, two of those as police chief, Sergeant said he still feels the threat of racism at times, as recently, he said, as last year.

“I’m a high-ranking official. I’m chief of police. And it dawned on me as I drive across the country, I have fear, I have fear when I see a police officer,” he said. “We were traveling in south Arkansas, and I was stopped by an agency — I will not name the name — but me and my wife were traveling, and we were stopped, and I was treated so rudely by the police.”

Sergeant said that incident popped into his mind when he saw the news about Floyd’s death, which he called “a heartless display of police brutality.”

Wanda V. Neal, Pine Bluff NAACP president, said what makes the death of Floyd different — why she thinks the backlash against police tactics that result in the deaths of unarmed black people won’t subside until substantive change is achieved — is the way the incident was captured and portrayed to the American people.

“I think us watching him on TV when they take 8 minutes and 46 seconds,” she said, referring to how long the police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on Floyd’s neck, “I started to ask you all to stand for that long, but that’s a long time. But I think it’s going to be different this time because of that.”

INTERVENTION RULE

In Little Rock on Wednesday evening, demonstrators with an organization called The Movement marched from the state Capitol east to Chester Street and back, accompanied by police officers. The march was billed as a walk in solidarity with local law enforcement.

Higgins and Little Rock Police Chief Keith Humphrey marched near the front of the group of approximately 200 protesters as they chanted “whose streets, our streets,” and “no justice, no peace.”

Before the protesters marched, Higgins informed them that on Wednesday he had signed the new “duty to intervene” policy.

“That was done because of you,” Higgins said. “The community has to remain involved. Hold us accountable. Point out things that we need to do.”

In an interview while marching back to the Capitol, Higgins told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that although there are policies in place to hold deputies accountable, in light of the video of Floyd’s death, “we can no longer assume that everyone’s going to do the right thing.”

He described the policy as an effort to have deputies hold one another accountable internally. Higgins said punishment for a deputy who does not intervene in an instance of excessive force could range up to and including termination.

“We have to make sure that the punishment is severe enough to reinforce the policy,” Higgins said.

At the rally, people with clipboards registered voters. There were also performances of dance and spoken word poetry.

Tim Campbell, an organizer with The Movement, told the crowd that he is all for demilitarizing and defunding the police — taking money from police departments to use for other purposes, including community-oriented policing.

“But,” Campbell added, “as black people there’s a lot of other things we need to defund as well. We need to defund these so-called thugs and gangsters that are in our communities sending our little black boys out here on the streets to die.”

At one point, when the demonstrators had gathered at Capitol Avenue and Chester Street, Kendall Harper, a detective with the Little Rock Police Department, addressed the crowd.

Harper explained that just because officers wear badges and guns, it does not mean they’ve lost their values or where they come from. There are officers in Little Rock ready to help mend the gap, he said.

“The time now is for us to shut up and listen,” he said of law enforcement officers.

PAINFUL LOSS

The march in Jacksonville started with several people speaking at the Jacksonville City Hall, including Mayor Bob Johnson who spoke to the crowd about several changes he has made in the police force.

One protester called it a “step in the right direction.”

The group then left City Hall around 5:30 p.m. on a just over one-mile march to Main Street and Second Street, chanting along the way.

Several Jacksonville police officers marched with demonstrators while others lined the route.

Robert Tilmon, pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church, told demonstrators about his experience with officers killing his family members.

“Bobby Moore — I’m sure y’all remember him,” Tilmon said. “He was killed by Josh Hastings, a Little Rock police officer. It was a really sad thing.”

Hastings shot and killed Moore, who Tilmon said was his nephew, on Aug. 12, 2012, when, according to Hastings, a vehicle driven by Moore was driving toward him and he fired in self-defense. Evidence was later presented that the vehicle was stopped or backing up when Hastings fired into the driver’s side of the vehicle.

Hastings was fired form the department for violating use of deadly force rules, but two juries failed to reach a verdict on criminal charges.

“No justice did prevail during that time,” Tilmon said. “Hastings had a horrible, horrible record.”

Not all officers are bad, Tilmon said, but occasionally there are bad ones in the departments.

“There’s a ton of good officers out there, but every once in a while, you’ve got one bad apple in the batch,” Tilmon said. “And that’s not good. But, we’re out here with the cause, and the cause is to move forward in the most positive way.”

ABSENT OFFICIALS

In Rogers, protesters met outside the city’s activity center, where they knelt for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. They then marched about half a mile to City Hall.

Protester Emma Willis said she appreciated the people who are running for office who attended the protest, and she criticized the lack of participation of community leaders.

“When we ask for your comments, and we ask for your solidarity, and we ask for you to march with us, and you aren’t here, your silence is deafening,” she said.

A protester said Mayor Greg Hines was to be at the protest but canceled. Hanna Lairy, spokeswoman for the city, said Hines and Police Chief Hayes Minor had prior commitments at the time of the protest that they had made before they knew about the protest.

Hines and Minor released written responses to protesters’ questions surrounding the Police Department’s polices, as well as to responses to the “8 Can’t Wait” campaign circulating around the country that calls for eight specific police changes.

“From 2016 to 2019, RPD officers arrested 19,830 individuals and used force 228 times (1.15%). Adding these arrests to the tens of thousands of other interactions our officers have had during this same time span (traffic stops, calls for service, etc.) the likelihood of a Rogers police officer using force is very, very low,” according to the statement.

Information for this article was contributed by Alex Golden of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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Participants at a Black Lives Matter protest kneel for 8 minutes, 46 seconds to remember George Floyd on Wednesday at the Rogers Activity Center. The protesters marched from the activity center to Rogers City Hall. More photos at arkansasonline.com/611blmrogers/. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Ben Goff)

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