No one was injured, no property was damaged, and no one was arrested on Sunday during the Stand Up Saratoga protest and rally. One small, nonviolent confrontation between the police and protestors occurred on Broadway itself after the group moved from Congress Park to the steps of City Hall at 474 Broadway.
On that much, everyone interviewed agreed.
After that, the stories and how they are perceived differed.
[FoothillsBusinessDaily.com could not get a reporter there on Sunday. Read our preview coverage of it here.]
Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton commended Lt. Robert Jillson for keeping the small confrontation on Broadway from getting out of hand.
“He did a phenomenal job,” she said. People stayed safe, and as far as she knew Monday morning, no one had complained.
Chief Shane Crooks agreed: “I considered it successful because nobody got hurt.”
Lexis Figuereo, the leader of the rally and a member of the Saratoga Black Lives Matter movement saw things very differently.
He saw police moving in too closely, police in riot gear, and on horseback.
Where the police chief said he saw the texts that Jillson sent to Figuereo as a way to reach out and communicate, Figuereo saw them as an irritant from a police officer whom he particularly does not like.
Police officers shut down traffic on Broadway for a short time, and Chief Crooks said he saw this as a way to protect everyone as the police moved the protestors off the street and back onto the sidewalk.
Figuereo saw the confrontation with people in the street as an intended distraction from the speech he was giving on the steps of city hall. Since traffic was shut down, the threat posed either by people in the street or by motorists was minimal so there was no need for the confrontation, he said.
Crooks said that some protestors wore bulletproof vests and brought bats, so yes the chief said, the police “geared up.” Figuereo said dozens of police in riot gear and on horseback, with a van ready to make mass arrests was intimidating and a threat to free speech.
Where Figuereo saw the marchers moving peacefully from the steps of City Hall back to Congress Park and dispersal at the end of the rally, Crooks said police did not know what the intention was, that the group could have changed direction at any point. The mounted police following the group stayed a reasonable distance back the chief said, but Figuereo said it felt as though the group was being ushered quickly out of town.
Crooks said that this, as with other incidents, is shifting the way that police handle protests in the city.
Figuereo said he thought most people probably could not believe the protesting that began last summer would last this long. He said: “This is just the start of what the rest of the summer will be.”
The protest indented to keep pressure on the Saratoga Springs government to make changes to the police force as outlined by the Police Reform Task Force resolution approved by the city council in March.