Phoenix Copwatch Media
Copwatch Responds to Police Abuse at 2006 MLK Day Celebration
January 23, 2006
The dehumanizing crowd control tactics used by the police against people at the MLK Day celebration at Margaret T. Hance Park were poorly covered by the media. Because we had heard about the police reaction to fights last year, members of Phoenix Copwatch were present to document potential abuses. Phoenix Copwatch is an independent volunteer group formed to combat police abuse.
What we witnessed was completely inappropriate. Rather than trust the mostly black crowd to disperse on their own, the police used horses to force hundreds of people from the public park out into the street minutes after the event ended.
Once in the street, the police used pepper spray on a number of individuals, sometimes while riding past them on motorcycles. Some of the youths may have been involved in minor fist fights, but many were guilty of nothing. Had the police not forced people out of the park so quickly, there wouldn't have been so many folks in the streets in the first place.
The black youth at this event were stripped of their dignity by being herded like cattle and "sprayed like cockroaches" as one young man stated. We believe that this is a matter of racism, and it is an atrocity for the police to behave in this way, especially on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.