WARNING: THE FOLLOWING VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC VIOLENCE THAT MAY BE DISTURBING TO VIEWERS. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
MANHATTAN, N.Y. (PIX11) — Protesters held signs saying “End police terror” and “Stop the war on Black America” during a rally to denounce the beating death of Tyre Nichols at Washington Square Park on Saturday evening.
The large crowd spent two hours demonstrating in the park before marching up to Times Square as police hurried to keep up. Many of the people said they felt they needed to attend the rally.
“It’s tiring for us to be killed when we get pulled over by police. We should be worried about getting arrested not that we’re going to die,” said protester Harmony Jones.
Five Memphis police officers allegedly held Nichols down and repeatedly struck the Black motorist with their fists, boots, and batons as he screamed for his mother. A video of the incident is filled with violent moments showing the officers, who are also Black, chasing and pummeling Nichols and leaving him on the pavement propped against a squad car as they fist-bump and celebrate their actions.
The footage emerged one day after the officers were charged with murder in Nichols’ death.
A similar rally was held in Newark earlier in the day. However, the protesters were also there to condemn the decision by a grand jury earlier this week not to indict a Newark police officer, who shot and killed Carl Dorsey, who was unarmed at the time of his death in 2021.
