Students, community members hold peaceful protest against police brutality

Pitt students and community members flooded the streets of Oakland Wednesday night to protest racial injustice and police brutality, joining other protesters around the country. 

More than 100 students and community members gathered in Schenley Plaza Wednesday at approximately 7 p.m. to peacefully protest police brutality. 

Police did not interfere with the protest, but they shut down and controlled traffic for brief periods of time in intersections on Forbes Avenue, Fifth Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard. At one point, protesters disbanded but reconvened minutes later at Fifth and Meyran avenues. They marched until 8:15 p.m., until they disbanded for the night, chanting, “We’ll be back.” 

The protesters marched against traffic, forcing it to a halt. 

“Black lives matter,” they chanted. “From Ferguson to NYC, f*ck police brutality!”

The protest at Pitt comes after, earlier in the day, a Staten Island grand jury failed to indict the NYPD officer who choked Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, to death in July. This decision comes less than a week after a Missouri grand jury failed to indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting and death of Michael Brown. 

Hours after the Eric Garner decision yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced a federal civil rights investigation into his murder.  

The protesters swarmed around cars stopped at green lights, aiming for the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard.

The Pitt Police monitored the protest, generally keeping to the sidewalks and controlling traffic. 

Deputy Police Chief Holly A. Lamb said the protest was lawful, and they had no plans to shut it down at the time. 

“I have no idea how long this is going to go on for,” she said. 

The protest was against police brutality and injustice in general, said Curtis Phillips, a participant and student at the Community College of Allegheny County.

“This is a protest for officer Darren Wilson after the things that happened in Ferguson and the guys choked out by police in New York,” he said. “It’s against injustice.”

Lauren Finkel, a protester and photojournalism major at Point Park University, said the “whole system is incredibly racist” and that the “militarization of police is just completely unacceptable.”

“How high does the body count have to get before something changes?” she said.

Pitt students also participated in the protest.

“This protest is kind of like a critical mass of people who aren’t going to take police brutality anymore,” Mihir Mulloth, a chemistry and neuroscience major, said.

When the protesters reached the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard, they stopped, and several dozen laid down in the middle of the street. One protester then called for a four-and-a-half minute moment of silence. Those protesters not laying in the intersection circled around those who were, and all were silent. 

While many protesters condemned police brutality, others expressed disgruntlement with the U.S. judicial system. One protester, David Humphrey, said the outcry was “not about race,” but instead about the response to the decisions made on incidents like those in Ferguson, Mo. 

“This will always be a problem with our society, especially today, so I don’t think it’s going to stop anytime soon,” Humphrey, an administration of justice major, said. “The numbers are still going to be there. It’s up to us to speak our minds.”

Mulloth cited his moral judgment as the driving force behind his presence at the protest.

“Why am I here? Because I’m a human being. No parent should have to tell their kids, ‘Don’t wear a hood, don’t go out at night, always show your hands to a police officer.’ Cops are here to protect us,” Mulloth said. “They serve us. Who are you supposed to trust if you can’t trust the cops?”