About a hundred people gathered outside D.C. police headquarters Friday to remember the lives of three men who died during police encounters in four days.
On Nov. 14, D.C. police shot and killed Kevin Booker after they said he lunged at officers with a knife and screwdriver. Two days later, Demetrius Alston died shortly after being arrested by Metro Transit police. The next day, a D.C. police officer fatally shot David Warren Childs after police said he disregarded orders not to reach for his gun. All three were Black men.
Speakers at the vigil also decried recent nonfatal police shootings, including two incidents in which Homeland Security agents fired into cars while on patrol with D.C. police. No one was injured in either incident.
“We are here to raise up the names of those who have been brutalized and killed by police,” said Merawi Gerima, an organizer with the DC Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, a group fighting unjust treatment based on race or political beliefs. “And we’re also here to commit to the fight back.”
D.C. police declined to comment.
Alston’s family attended the vigil, weeping as Black Lives Matter DC organizer April Goggans read a statement on their behalf. Family members said they wanted to tell the crowed about the Demetrius they knew and loved, worried that police would engage in “their familiar and heartbreaking campaign to assassinate the character of someone that they killed.”
“The world deserves to know Demetrius, not the version being created to justify what happened to him,” the family said in the statement, describing Alston as a Washington native who expressed himself through fashion and made his five siblings laugh with his jokes — especially his spot-on impression of their grandmother.
“We want the world to remember Demetrius as he truly was: loving, generous, joyful, hilarious, creative, faithful, brilliant and deeply cherished by us all.”
Local groups advocating for a range of causes including D.C. statehood, racial equality and migrant rights organized the vigil. Many speakers railed against the federal law enforcement surge ordered in August by President Donald Trump, then extended in September by D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser. They pointed to Congress’s efforts to overhaul Washington’s criminal justice system in line with Trump’s demands and accused Bowser of selling the city out by failing to be a voice of resistance.
One protester held a poster quoting Trump when he announced he was sending the National Guard to Washington and taking federal control of the city’s police force: “Now they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want,” he said at the time, referring to law enforcement. Underneath the quote, they drew a badge that read “license to kill.”
As the vigil drew to an end, attendees formed a line and held up photos of dozens of people killed by police in the D.C. area. They read each name out loud. Then they broke into “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round,” a common civil rights anthem: “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’round. I’m gonna keep on a-walkin’, keep on a-talkin’, gonna build a brand new world.”
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