Hundreds protest near Utah Capitol on Thursday

About 200 people gathered Thursday afternoon for the first of two planned protests on Capitol Hill.

The closure of the Capitol building pushed the early crowd across the street to the Salt Lake City Council Hall. Police were present while National Guard troops and vehicles were posted around the rest of Washington Square, including in front of the Capitol.

Thursday afternoon’s protest over the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed in Minnesota by a white police officer, is the fourth in four days in Salt Lake City. It is the fifth since Saturday, when demonstrators flipped a police car and another vehicle — belonging to a man who aimed a bow and arrow at demonstrators — and set them on fire. The man with the bow and arrow, Brandon E. McCormick of Taylorsville, was charged Thursday with three felonies and a misdemeanor.

Officers arrested 46 people, and 21 officers were treated for injuries, mostly heat-related, in Saturday’s protest. An additional 18 protesters were arrested in Monday’s protest, and one person was arrested by Utah Highway Patrol trooper for violating Salt Lake City’s 8 p.m. curfew during Tuesday’s demonstrations.

On Wednesday, after curfew was lifted, protesters stayed out until 10 p.m., and Salt Lake City police reported zero arrests.

Since Saturday, Salt Lake City’s protests have been almost entirely peaceful. Speakers at events have called for nonviolence and said those who damage property or are disrespectful should leave.

Diane Bahati even began Wednesday’s demonstration at City Hall by leading a chant of “peaceful protest.”

Ahead of Thursday’s protests at the Capitol, the American Civil Liberties Union and the local Black Lives Matter group released a statement condemning SLC Mayor Erin Mendenhall’s curfew. The groups said it quashed people’s rights to protest, hindered the change activist sought and scared people. They equated it to a suppression of free speech.

The statement specifically said black, brown, immigrant and refugee SLC residents feared retribution if they left their homes amid the curfew, even for approved reasons. It added the curfew was achieved using “police-state tactics such as emergency alerts and low-flying helicopters.”

They contrasted how SLC’s minority populations felt with how the “[r]esidents of the predominantly white or otherwise insulated neighborhoods of Salt Lake City felt free to violate the curfew order without risk of arrest and freely enjoyed the very public spaces that the curfew forbade."

As remedies, the groups suggested actions for Mendenhall and city administrators to take. They include: recognizing the Salt Lake City Police Department has a problem of racism, attending sensitivity training, focusing on police de-escalation, dropping all charges against protesters, overhauling the Police Civilian Review board, expanding voting access on Election Day, ceasing to criminalize the homeless community, removing and firing all officers who are accused of excessive force, banning using rubber bullets on protesters, and issuing an apology.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/370o266