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Steve Thurston (2021)
Protesters blocked traffic, stopping three cars at one point, along Broadway in Saratoga Springs on July 15.
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Steve Thurston (2021)
Police tackle a protester on Broadway in Saratoga Springs, Wednesday evening July 14.
Saratoga Springs police arrested five people, early reports say, Wednesday evening July 14, after Black Lives Matters protesters wound their way through city streets, stopping traffic and sometimes verbally engaging with two mounted police officers, pedestrians and others. Protesters chanted “No Justice, no peace, no racist police” and other similar chants.
The group of as many as 60 people wound its way up Broadway where it blocked traffic and stopped three cars for about 10 minutes in front of the Adelphi Hotel.
“When an officer says [he is] going to use 130 years of [his] power and privilege to control a narrative, it is a threat against black and brown people,” Jamaica Miles said through a megaphone in front of the hotel. She is an activist with All of Us in the capital region and a recently-elected member of the Schenectady school board.
She was referring to the statement by Saratoga Springs Assistant Police Chief John Catone who said that he would use his family’s long history in the city to change what he sees as a negative narrative of policing. He called on a silent majority of people to stand with him in this.
Many people of color at the protest said statements like that divide the community and put people of color in danger.
With him at the press conference when he made the statement on June 28 was Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton. Dalton is running for mayor as an independent on the Stronger Together line.
A condemning statement from the Saratoga County League of Women voters, a nonpartisan group, said the press conference that linked protests and criticism of the police to an increase in criminal activity appears "to be aimed to intimidate those who exercise that right" to protest. [Read more here.]
Speakers at last night’s protest asked in part for an apology from the city for Catone’s remarks.
The march continued, turning down various side streets, blocking the intersection of Phila and Putnam streets for a few minutes before walking on to Gardner Lane, the location of Darryl Mount’s death.
Protesters called for justice for Darryl Mount, a black man who police said fell from scaffolding, entered a coma and died shortly after in 2013. Others say the type of bruising Mount sustained would come from a physical battering, not falling.
Protesters and speakers yesterday called the death a murder by police.
About 8:15, after an hour of marching, the police gave protesters five minutes to disperse and leave the driving lanes of the streets. Police addressed the crowd through a PA system in a police SUV that at first was difficult to hear. An officer repeatedly read a statement that said the protestors were trespassing and had to leave the street no matter the topic of the protest.
By the time the group reached the intersection of Broadway and Caroline Street, a few dozen police in riot gear holding long billy clubs approached from the north, and police vehicles and two mounted patrols pushed up Caroline Street toward the protesters. The police waited and then pushed on and the protesters fell back.
About 8:30 police charged protesters, tackling at least three people and arresting them.
The groups faced each other for another hour, and by 9:30, the protesters were forced back into Congress Park where the rally continued.
The protest initially asked for an apology from the city officials after Assistant Police Chief John Catone conflated a fight on Caroline Street in the wee hours of Saturday June 26 with the social justice protests.
“We are demanding a community conversation with our public officials,” Lexis Figuereo, the leader of BLM Saratoga, and organizer of the event, told about 100 people who gathered in Congress Park at the start of the protest. He added that he wants the meeting to include third-party mediators.
Although Catone has issued a statement days after the protest, saying he allowed “anger and frustration” to interfere with his intended message, for Nan Sullivan of Saratoga Springs it was not enough. She wanted to hear a full apology, she said at the start of the protest.
Reverend Joe Cleveland of the Saratoga Springs Unitarian Universalist Church of Saratoga Springs said, “It’s unconscionable that we haven’t heard an apology from the city...We just need to keep lifting our voices.”
David Buchyn, who lives in Wilton and works on conservative political campaigns there, walked the full march with the group to observe and listen, he said. He said he was fully in support of Catone’s original statement.
“What are we going to do? That’s the question,” he said, adding that he spoke with a number of people who he recognized along the route and asked them the same. “I don’t know, and I didn’t get any good answers.”
Broadway had been full of pedestrians and outdoor diners at the start of the march but was largely empty by 9:30, the night before the Saratoga Race Course was set to open.
During the march, some people on the sidewalk or in windows on the second and third floors jeered at the protestors, some supported them. A couple tables of diners at Morrissey’s Restaurant on Broadway cheered as police moved by. The chants and calls from the group at times included various insults, vulgarities and a raised middle finger aimed at police or others.
Steve Thurston (2021)
Police blocked the southbound lanes of Broadway in Saratoga Springs as protesters walked north early in the march on July 14.