When MLK Saratoga planned what they called a “CommUnity” gathering for Congress Park in Saratoga Springs yesterday, they did not know that a jury would return a guilty verdict in George Floyd’s murder by the time the group came together at 6 p.m. The verdict found the police officer, who killed Floyd in Minnesota, guilty of murder and manslaughter shortly before the event.
Hollyday Hammond and Garland Nelson, leaders of MLK Saratoga, led the somber meeting.
“It grew out of an emotional need to be together,” Hammond said shortly before the event began, adding that the verdict made her “relieved and pleased.”
Rick Fenton said he read the Saratoga Springs Police Reform Task Force survey that asked Saratoga citizens about their dealings with police. He realized that, for some residents, dealing with police has been very different than his experience.
Many people have “a lot of experiences that most of us aren’t aware of...I was blown away by that,” he said. “It’s important for white people to be seen in support of people of all races.”
Saratoga Springs Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton brought her kids to the event and said trying to translate what happened for the minds of small children has been tough. She said she was grateful to MLK Saratoga for holding the event.
Camille Daniels, a co-chair of the city’s police Task Force watched from the back of the crowd and shot pictures with her phone.
She said the verdict offered a bit of accountability. She said Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of “positive peace” and “negative peace.” She said, the former is where everyone feels justice around them and the latter is where the violence has stopped but justice for all is illusive.
She brought up the history of the country, genocide of native people, the name Saratoga itself coming from the American Indians who were here. Not just Black people need justice, she said.
“Those problems need to be cleared up...before we’re going to have a positive peace," she said.
The group was led in prayer; George Floyd’s obituary was read; and the two dozen gathered sang “This Little Light of Mine” and “Amazing Grace.” Much of what was said at the microphone was support for Floyd’s family and prayers and hopes for peace toward them.
“When we need to pull together as a community, we don’t talk about it, we just do it,” Nelson told the crowd. He said that the Floyd verdict bent the moral arc of the universe just a little bit more toward justice.
“Today’s verdict was for his family,” Nelson said after the event. “We feel it, but they have to live with the loss.”
He said he is glad the verdict came in the way it did, but he thought it should not have played out that way. The officer clearly killed the man and if he were a decent man, he would have stepped forward and admitted guilt, Nelson said.
Like Daniels, he wondered about the justice. “Who won here, exactly?" he asked.
A family lost a loved one and the police officer’s family is now “tarred and feathered” with sour history the officer created.
The police officer clearly thought the system would save him, and he could get away with murder. It is a problem of the system that officers feel that way, Nelson said. There should have been no trial: “It should have been a gimme.”