Several hundred people rallied on Saturday, July 15 in Stratford, Conn. in response to recent incidents of police brutality against the African American community in the city’s South End neighborhood.
Outrage followed an assault of Titasheen Mitchell, a 15-year-old from the Jamaican community, on March 15 by a Stratford police officer outside of a Jamaican restaurant owned by Mitchell’s mother.
Eyewitnesses, including Stratford councilman Alvin O’Neal, saw Mitchell get punched in the face by the officer. O’Neal was assaulted by the police when he tried to intervene. Incredibly, O’Neal and the 15-year-old Mitchell have been charged with assault of the officer.
Community leaders, such as Rev. James Morton of the First Baptist Church, say that this incident is part of a pattern of harassment and violence by the police and racist organizations against the African American community. Just days before the July 15 demonstration, defaced $1 bills with swastikas and racist slurs were found in the South End neighborhood. White supremacist hate groups threatened to appear at the rally.
Rev. Morton, the state conference of the NAACP, and other religious and community leaders played a decisive role in ensuring that there was a strong community response to the racist police violence.
The powerful July 15 protest included a number of impassioned speeches by local progressive leaders and by Marcia Mitchell-Davis, Mitchell’s mother. Speakers harshly criticized the Stratford police department for years of “tyranny and racism” and for exonerating David Gugliotti, the officer that assaulted Mitchell and O’Neal. Signs in the crowd read “Justice for Titasheen” and “Stop Police Brutality.”
There is a strong and growing anti-racist movement in Conn. dedicated to mobilizing against police brutality and protesting wherever white supremacist organizations dare to show their faces.
