“Police drove into the Banner!” Marchers Say Police Injure Several Including Children at Denver Solidarity with Baltimore March

Solidarity assemblies have taken place on Tuesday and then again last night to show solidarity with Freddie May of Baltimore who was killed in police custody on April 12, 2015. Nationwide protests have happened as well. As the nation has yet to recover from the police killings of unarmed people of color including in Denver, marchers continue to say that they want officials to hold police accountable .

On Tuesday, a march took place beginning at the Tivoli Center at Metro State University following a panel presentation by two former political prisoners, former Black Panther Ashanti Alston of Rhode Island, and Chicano activist Ricardo Romero of Greeley. The following footage is from that Tuesday march that followed to downtown Denver.

Then we hear a witness account of the following day’s march where protesters say they were ambushed by police. A member of the Denver Community Defense Committee-a group that supports families who have experienced police violence-didn’t want to be identified but said that media accounts were flawed.

The Denver Post reported that police reacted to protester violence when an officer was knocked off of his motorcycle but witness accounts say that the officer ran over a protester’s foot while other heavily armed officers dressed in riot gear indiscriminately grabbed people to arrest as well as pepper spraying others. Many present questioned the grade of the chemical weapon because of the physical responses of those who were sprayed. Those sprayed included four children who were reported to have suffered health consequences after the incident.