More than 2 dozen arrested, cited in police funding protest in Philadelphia

The protesters said they were demanding cuts to the police budget and calling for more money for programs supporting schools, housing, and jobs.

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  Ximena Conde comes from Wisconsin Public Radio where she worked as a general assignment reporter covering southeastern Wisconsin as the station’s Second Century News Fellow. She previously worked as Rhode Island Public Radio’s Morning Edition producer.
  
  Conde grew up in Queens, NY and graduated from Rutgers University.
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  WHYY arts & culture reporter Peter Crimmins first became interested in radio in the fourth grade, when he hid a homemade, contraband crystal-diode radio in a shoebox and smuggled it into the Boy Scout summer camp.
  Subsequent radio projects were more successful. For eight years, Peter was the producer and host of a radio show about cinema — “Film Close-Ups” — on KALX in Berkeley, Ca., and was senior producer at Ben Manilla Productions in San Francisco (i.e. the paying gig). After wandering the freelance universe for a few years, he joined the WHYY staff. He rides his bike to work from South Philadelphia.
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 Emma Lee / WHYY

Philadelphia police arrest protesters inside the Municipal Services Building.

(Philadelphia) — A couple dozen protesters were arrested for occupying the Municipal Services Building in Philadelphia, across from City Hall, including – briefly – a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

People had trespassed into the building, which is closed to the public because of the COVID-19 pandemic, where WHYY’s Billy Penn reports the group staged a sit-in to demand City Council cut the police department budget by $120 million. Council is set to take a final vote on the budget Thursday.

At one point, the group sang songs together.

Initially, police gave the protesters space but after about an hour, they systematically arrested them, catching reporter Samantha Melamed in the sweep and handcuffing her with zip ties. She was released shortly afterward. A spokesperson for the police department said Internal Affairs is investigating Melamed’s detainment, which appears to violate department policy on press access to protests.

Protesters continue to chant as one by one they are arrested for blocking the entrance to MSB elevators pic.twitter.com/9yp47UdU9i

— Max M. Marin (@MaxMMarin) June 23, 2020

Those not arrested spilled outside the building, joining another, larger group of several hundred protestors that had marched up Broad Street from South Philadelphia. Both groups shared a demand to defund the police.

The other march began around 3 p.m. at Broad and Snyder streets in South Philadelphia to protest neighborhood vigilante-style groups and the police they say are aligning themselves with them.

During the recent period of social unrest following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, there have been at least two incidents in as many weeks in Philadelphia wherein  groups of mostly white men wielding baseball bats, and in one case a hatchet, have amassed to defend a police station in Fishtown and a statue of Christopher Columbus in South Philly.

“Vigilantes claiming to do jobs of police, menacing Black and brown people walking on the street, and sending people to the hospital while police stood by or actively encouraged the violence,” said Molly Lawrence with the group Socialist Alternative.

Traffic on Broad Street was diverted as protestors marched north en masse toward City Hall, demanding City Council divert funding away from the police department and toward more community services.

Emma Lee / WHYY

Philadelphia police arrest protesters inside the Municipal Services Building.

Kenny Golson, of Southwest Philadelphia, joined the protest because he just graduated from Haverford College and wants a better future.

“I’m broke, I’m Black, I’m struggling,” he said. “I’m out here fighting for my people, for all people, for humanity. The cops are not part of that whatsoever. They are murdering and pillaging our communities.”

City Council has removed $33 million from the police department in its upcoming budget plan, which originally was going to increase police funding by $19 million. Some protestors say the reduced funding is merely reshuffling certain duties that had been done by the police. The council budget moved $14 million from the police department to the Managing Director’s office, including $12.3 million for crossing guards and $1.9 million for a new type of public safety officer.

WHYY is the leading public media station serving the Philadelphia region, including Delaware, South Jersey and Pennsylvania. This story originally appeared on WHYY.org.

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