SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of San Francisco Bay Area residents took to this city's streets to protest police brutality across the country.
The crowd gathered in San Francisco’s Financial District Friday evening and listened to a dozen speakers express their frustration with issues including racism, police killings, systematic oppression and hash-tag activism. The rally progressed down Market St. to San Francisco City Hall, stopping traffic along the way.
The San Francisco demonstration follows many similar rallies around the country in response to the police killings of two black men earlier this week. Alton Sterling was killed outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile was fatally shot in his car during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minn.
A similar rally in Dallas Thursday night ended in bloody chaos after a sniper, who authorities say was upset over the recent deaths and sought to kill white people, killed five police officers and wounded six others. The San Francisco rally began with a prayer for the demonstration to occur peacefully, and not to end in similar violence.
Frank Lara, a part of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism coalition that helped organize this event, said the demonstration was to demand justice for the Sterling and Castile death by urging the police officers who killed them to be jailed.
Police officers stayed close to the demonstration at all times, on the streets, in vans and on motorcycles.
Earlier on Friday, San Francisco police chief Toney Chaplin addressed the media to state his condolences with the officers killed in Dallas.
“It is disturbing that a peaceful, lawful demonstration by Dallas citizens was exploited for a vicious attack,” read the SFPD official statement. “Even while under fire, these brave officers strove to protect protesters from gunfire.”
Paulina Maldonado, co-president of Latin@ Young Democrats of San Francisco, helped organize the event. She said she once thought about being an officer and entered into the police academy, where she saw firsthand the fear instilled in officers, which she says prompts them to use their weapons.
“When you couple toxic masculinity, racism, someone that’s in a position of power with the fact they have really, really poor training, that’s when disaster happens,” Maldonado said.
Reactions from onlookers were mixed. Some clapped or honked their horns in support of the rally, others loudly expressed their dissatisfaction with it. A few passerby stopped to speak with the police officers, shaking their hands.
Rally attendee Patrick Simmons said he sensed a different reaction around the two recent killings, especially the way Facebook Live captured Castile’s brutal death. Simmons noticed more friends who normally would not speak up on the issue condemning police brutality.
“I think a lot of people realized, maybe (Black Lives Matter activists) weren’t just crying wolf, maybe they weren’t just complaining for no reason, maybe there is something else to this,” Simmons said.
Jonathan Locket attended the event as a way to heal from the pain of seeing black people being killed by police. Lockett said he felt despair after hearing about the victims of police killings, knowing they could be his friend or his brother.
“We’re still doing this in 2016,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking, it’s sad.”
