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In Fort Wayne, Indiana, the police this week have most likely ended the local Movement for Black Lives after 18 days of continuous protests. While police in bigger cities make concessions and agree to reforms, here the police, in collusion with the mayor, have conceded nothing.
Protests broke out in Ft. Wayne on Friday, May 29, and continued through the weekend. Each night ended with protesters being teargassed, maced, shot with rubber bullets, and arrested. They were held without bail for up to 72 hours.
To the best of our knowledge and according to media accounts, there was vandalism only on Friday night, when windows were broken after police deployed teargas on protestors without warning. https://www.wane.com/top-stories/protesters-break-windows-of-multiple-buildings-in-downtown-fort-wayne/)
Since then, we have seen some protesters throwing thin plastic water bottles at armored police cars, and some protesters have blocked lanes of traffic, but we haven’t witnessed any other illegal activity. However, the police have essentially made protesting itself illegal.
They have done so by declaring the location of the protests and large areas of downtown around them “emergency incident areas.” They have done this several times, not offered any warning, and then begun teargassing and arresting people.
Among the most common charges: “refusing to leave an emergency incident area.” But often people couldn't leave the "emergency incident area" because the police were gassing people from multiple directions, trapping people in the very areas they were being told to leave.
On Monday, June 1, Mayor Tom Henry, a four-term Democratic mayor, released a statement supporting the police’s actions from the previous weekend ( https://www.cityoffortwayne.org/latest-news/4878-statement-from-mayor-tom-henry-on-this-past-weekend-s-protests-and-demonstrations-in-the-city-of-fort-wayne.html). On Thursday, June 4, there was a “unity march” between the mayor, the police, and protesters.
The police made no concessions and agreed to no reforms; therefore many protesters refused to march ( https://wpta21.com/2020/06/04/protesters-police-and-city-leaders-march-in-unity-to-mlk-bridge/). This deepened the public narrative dichotomizing “good” protesters from “bad” protesters. The night ended in more police aggression against protesters.
Protesters continued to congregate downtown, with varying experiences with the police. A three-day protest organized by “The People’s Movement” was held the weekend of June 12-14. Sunday night ended in more violence from the police toward protesters who were blocking traffic.
Monday, June 15, brought targeted arrests for crimes allegedly committed weeks prior: police pulled up to the crowd of protesters and took two people and then later came back for a total of five arrests. ( https://wpta21.com/2020/06/15/fort-wayne-police-arrest-several-people-for-rioting-during-protest-monday/).
FWPD continued with the narrative of “good” and “bad” protesters Monday night when they released a statement explaining that their arrests earlier in the evening targeted people who “have hijacked what have otherwise been peaceful protests” ( https://www.wane.com/top-stories/5-arrested-during-monday-protests-in-fort-wayne/)
On June 16, police followed and arrested two protest leaders, Josiah Dees and Erin Fogg, who were not protesting but driving on Coliseum Boulevard, miles from the protest locations. Police told the media at the time of the arrest that the two were planning acts of violence.
Several police vehicles, a K-9 unit, and who knows how many officers, were used to pick them up weeks after the alleged offenses. The next day charging documents revealed there were no charges for planning violence. The only charges against Jo and Erin are misdemeanors.
Jo Dees is charged with refusing to leave an emergency incident area, resisting law enforcement and obstructing traffic. A separate charge of resisting law enforcement has been dismissed.
Erin Fogg is charged with rioting, disorderly conduct and obstructing traffic. A charge of resisting law enforcement was dismissed. Please take a look at the pictures from their arrest and see for yourself how excessive the police show of force was ( https://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/police-fire/20200618/pair-arrested-for-role-in-protests).
As of today, police are winning: protesters are terrified of facial recognition technology, criminal convictions, losing jobs while held without bond, or losing an eye, as Balin Brake did when the police shot a tear gas canister at his face ( https://fortwaynesnbc.com/2020/06/18/i-want-you-to-look-me-in-my-eye-and-say-that-youre-sorry-man-who-lost-his-eye-protesting-says-he-demands-a-response-from-the-mayor/).
Despite announcing a “Moving Forward Together” action plan today, the mayor has yet to apologize for, or even acknowledge, the excessive use of police force, the unjust and dangerous use of teargas, and the attempts to squash our right and will to protest in our streets.
As concerned citizens, we have hit a wall. We need help to shed a national spotlight on what is happening in our city, to our citizens. @maddow @chrislhayes @ChrisCuomo @donlemon @Lawrence @democracynow @MorningEdition @vicenews @rgay --can you help?
And a belated addition. We’ve put together a petition to demand a man on our county council resign after this racist display caught on camera. See the petition for details and know that this is the systemic racism we face. https://www.change.org/p/resignation-of-allen-county-councilperson-larry-l-brown
So this thread has made its way over to Facebook, which is good since the goal is to bring national attention to Ft Wayne, but it’s being attributed to me, and I just want to make clear that while I put the content in tweet form, the content is the work of a team of folks.
@anamnestes @MichelleLKelsey @meiernicki @carrsa are the co-authors/editors/fact verifiers/email blasters who put their writing and research skills to use on this project. As with much of our activism, we worked collaboratively on this. Credit goes to the collective.
