Protesters slam police for kneeling with them, say it's just a 'PR stunt' to make them look good
While videos of police officers around the country kneeling in solidarity with protesters speaking out against police brutality and racial injustice have gone viral online, some have suggested the action is just a "PR stunt" without meaning.
Hundreds of thousands have flooded the streets in several cities over the Memorial Day death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American truck driver who was killed in police custody as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for close to nine minutes.
Protests have often turned violent, with officers in charge of controlling the crowds filmed lobbing tear gas canisters into groups, and firing rubber bullets and pepper balls seemingly without provocation.
But there have also been cases where police have backed the protesters — Los Angeles Police Department commander famously kneeled with a group of protesters outside Mayor Eric Garcetti's house earlier this week.
Though the gesture was praised in some quarters, others, like Black Lives Matter organizer and actor Kendrick Sampson have questioned its motives. "We don't want anybody to take a knee, a knee doesn't help me heal the wounds," he told ABC News. "They shot me seven times. It does not help my boy who has two broken bones in his skull right now because they aimed a cannon at his head with rubber bullets."
Sampson, who has starred in the likes of 'The Vampire Diaries', 'How To Get Away With Murder', and 'The Flash,' branded the commander's actions a "farce" and that it was nothing but "PR to make them look good."
Those comments came a few days after the actor took to Twitter to share a photo of the bloody wounds he had sustained on his legs after he was shot with pepper ball and asked Garcetti to attend a BLM town hall.
Roxane Gay, a bestselling author and activist shared Sampson's sentiments. "I need cops and politicians and white people more broadly to stop kneeling," she tweeted. "We don't need you to kneel. We need you to stand up for real, radical, sustained change."
Paula Minor, a Black Lives Matter Los Angeles organizer, said she was "highly uncomfortable" with police kneeling because of the connotations it carried just weeks after Floyd died with an officer's knee on his neck. She said protesters were speaking out and kneeling not for the symbolism, but for systemic change.
Their apprehension is not really misplaced. On June 3, police officers in Buffalo, New York, were filmed taking a knee with protesters outside City Hall. Just one day later, two officers were filmed forcefully pushing a 75-year-old man to the ground during a protest outside the very same hall. He was seriously injured in the incident, and the outrage saw both officers being arrested.
You can watch the video here.
It was a similar story in Portland, where, last Sunday, May 31, officers were snapped kneeling with protesters. Just an hour after that picture was taken, the officers gassed, shot rubber bullets at, and pepper-sprayed more than a hundred people.
Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, said it was good to see law enforcement participate with and support the community but that the country could only move forward with widespread reform, including the abolishment of qualified immunity — a federal law that shields officials for being sued for discretionary actions performed within their official capacity — and the separation of police from the district attorney's offices.