Demonstrators hit the streets in several areas of New York City after a grand jury declined yesterday to charge a white police officer in the choking death of a black man, days after a similar decision sparkedunrest in US cities.
Soon after the decision by the grand jury, hundreds of protesters converged on the Rockefeller Center and in New York City’s iconic Times Square chanting “No justice, no peace,” the signature call of demonstrators already angered by a jury decision last week not to indict a white policeman in the fatal shooting of black teenager Michael Brown.
Police made at least 30 arrests, New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said.
Both cases, coupled with the death of a 12-year-old black boy who was gunned down by police officers in Ohio while handling a toy pistol in a playground, have reignited a longstanding debate in the United States about relations between law enforcement and African Americans, as well as accusations of overly aggressive policing.
There was another protest at Grand Central Terminal, where about 50 protesters lay, pretending to be dead, and on Staten Island. Small demonstrations also broke out in Harlem, Union Square and Columbus Circle, while there were similarly small but peaceful protests in Washington, DC.
