DETROIT UPRISING

Starting May 29, 2020, activist groups from the Metro Detroit’s diverse communities and organizations took to the streets in varying capacities fighting for equity, police accountability, and for justice for individuals harmed by police brutality. Overwhelmingly, Detroit’s participation in the Black Lives Matter movement has been nonviolent with the exception of certain events taking unexpected and frightening turns detailed below.

On Saturday October 24, 2020, a  joint protest was hosted by activist organizations SHIFT and Detroit Will Breathe in Shelby Township, Michigan. The protest started in the parking lot of the Planet Fitness on 23 Mile for a brief rally at 2:00pm. Once the march took to the streets, Shelby Police and Macomb County Police immediately delivered unlawful assembly orders asking protestors to get off the street and remain on the sidewalk or face arrests within the minute warning. Moments later, police engaged, some dressed in riot gear, arresting a handful of protestors including Detroit Will Breathe organizer Tristan Taylor. Most protestors backed onto the sidewalk while yelling at the police. One individual detainee was strip searched against a squad car in public, with pants being removed and left on the ground.

After the first wave of arrests, the march abided by staying on the sidewalks until they took to marching in a subdivision with police trailing the march. Upon reaching Van Dyke some time later, the protestors decided to remain on the sidewalk on their way back to their vehicles. Police from Shelby Township, Macomb County, Sterling Heights, and Utica suddenly rolled up to the curb, stepping out and grabbing protestors who were staying on the sidewalk. Angry and confused protestors yelled at the officers as they didn't understand what prompted the second wave of arrests.

Upon returning to the parking lot, police followed in in mass, awaiting the dispersal of the protestors. Protesters began to leave around 6:00pm, some heading to the Macomb County Jail to demand the arrested protestors be freed while others went home. Videos soon after began to circulate online of arrests continuing at the jail.

After a march through Detroit’s Downtown and Greektown city districts on the evening of Saturday, August 22, 2020,  Detroit Will Breathe organized a nonviolent occupation of Woodward Ave near the John R intersection as a statement against federal agent presence in the city. People were seen dancing to music, singing, conversing, reading books, and even napping. In the early morning hours of Sunday, August 23 around midnight, the Detroit Police Department decided to send riot police in to disperse the nonviolent crowd with smoke, tear gas, pepper spray, shields, and batons. Some protestors sustained serious injuries. A street medic was beaten to the point that they sustained broken ribs and a collapsed lung. A woman was seen flipped over an officers head and body slammed onto the concrete, another pepper sprayed in the face while already having been detained. A man in his 60s was seen being thrown to the pavement. Dozens of other protestors were pepper sprayed. One man was brought to tears, screaming into the night due to officers saturating his face, body, and clothing with the chemical agents. As a downtown resident came outside to offer sanctuary in his apartment vestibule to protestors seeking shelter, he began to plead with officers for them to stop brutalizing people as they were being detained. This man was then met by four cops who gang tackled him, one of which repeatedly punched him in the face. Officers yelled for the man to stop resisting while he seemed to be trying to protect his face as the four policemen in total sat on top of him as the one officer tried to inflict as much pain as possible.   

Protestors showed up in large numbers in Detroit at McNichols and San Juan on the evening of July 10, 2020, a nearby location where the Detroit Police Department shot and killed a 20 year old Black male by the name of Hakim Littleton after a confrontation occurred. At the time the protest was organized, body camera footage of Littleton firing upon officers had not been released but emotions still ran high. As many community members knew the individual killed, the event became personal. The protest was nonviolent until DPD ordered riot police in to disperse the crowd, charging forward, hitting individuals with shields and batons, others were arrested. Of these arrests, a chokehold was observed being used upon Detroit Will Breathe organizer, Nakia Renne Wallace and a knee to the neck of another detainee was also documented. As the protesters anger grew, bottles and other debris began to find their way into the air, raining down upon the riot police who set up a new perimeter until the detainees were taken to vehicles. Protestors refused to leave the area, eventually seeing police pull back in phases. During this retreat, police fired tear gas and smoke canisters into the crowd of which protestors then responded by tossing them back. As the police made their escape, the movement organized a march to the 12th Precinct where a second stand off took place with no major events taking place. 

On the night of June 28, 2020, two Detroit Police SUV cruisers drove through a crowd of protestors, pushing multiple individuals onto the hood in effort to avoid being run over. The protestors attempted to pass through a police blockade in order to get to their end destination where most participant vehicles were parked. Upon doing so, numerous police cruisers were surrounded as the movement passed around them. As protestors yelled at officers in their vehicles as the march walked by, two of the police SUVs began to drive through the crowd, slowly bumping the crowd in their efforts to get out. At one point, the lead SUV shot forward with a more powerful burst that sent the crowd into fearful screams. A protestor near the back of the SUV reacted to the screams and struck the back window with a blunt object, shattering the rear window. The driving officer then reacted and sped up in their attempts to get out of the crowd, launching forward with more speed, sending two individuals onto the hood as a third person fell off onto ground ground, their head inches from the front passenger wheel. One of the remaining individuals on the hood then went tumbling off the passenger side moments before the other went flying into the air at a high rate of speed after he was forced to jump off the SUV’s hood due to the officer’s ever increasing speed. A second police SUV also had individuals pushed onto the hood, knocked them loose, then continued to drive through the first SUV’s aftermath. All other officers at the scene refrained from driving through the crowd.

During the first weekend of protests (May 29-31, 2020) against police brutality in the city of Detroit, protestors were met with tear gas, rubber bullets, flash bangs, and other military tactics after a handful of instigators threw objects at police officers. Despite fellow protestors attempts to stop the instigators, bottles, rail spikes, and fireworks continued to launch from the back of the crowd resulting in a police response. After back to back nights of clashes between police and protestors on Friday and Saturday, Mayor Duggan initiated an 8:00 PM curfew which then resulted in an additional conflict during Sunday evening and arrests early into the following week for breach of curfew despite protestors nonviolently expressing their first amendment rights. As the protest movement maintained nonviolence into the following days, Detroit Police Chief Craig changed the enforcement of the curfew to allow the marches to continue as long as the protestors remained peaceful.