Sophie Massey ’15 is not tryna waste words right now (or time this Saturday):
Police brutality has been a growing problem in Middletown that people are dealing with every day. Come to express your support of a peaceful Middletown and hold police accountable. Meet at Union Park near Church and Main St.
Sponsored by RISE (Students of Color Resist Imprisonment for a Safer Existence).
Date: Saturday, May 11
Time: 1 p.m.
Place: Union Park, near Church and Main St.
Facebook: Event
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Really? People are dealing with police brutality “every day” in Middletown? How is this a growing problem?
A man was tased to death in 2010 because of a MEDICAL call to the police…a middle schooler was tased at school about a month ago…a high schooler was tased not too long before that…part of the reason this march is happening is that last week on Main St a group of people who were meeting in Spear Park heard about the police beating someone up on Ferry St…a friend of mine, a Wesleyan student, was the victim of forced hospitalization last year at the hands of the Middletown police…not to mention, there’s also the recent brutality and profiling and forced hospitalizations by PSafe…in 2008 Wesleyan students were bitten by dogs and beat up by the police on campus…a man I know was taken out of his car at gunpoint without even being told why he had been pulled over…when people are not being physically beaten or tased by police, they are being intimidated, and a new law against “loitering” in Middletown is part of that…part of that, and part of an effort to “clean up” the North End. Scary stuff, IMO, and this is just what I know about after two years of off-and-on living in Middletown. I will be at the march…it’s horrible to think of the intimidation and brutality that police inflict on North End residents, and how much of it is because Wesleyan is their neighbor? That’s not something anyone should have to live with. I think it’s important to show that I don’t support that, that if there’s a chance this is being done in my name as a Wesleyan student, I do not support that.
There seem to have been only been two serious incidents in the past five years. Based on the relatively high levels of crime in Middletown, this does not seem like a point of concern. Many cities similar to Middletown have loitering bylaws. Honestly, there are many more pressing and important causes for you to spend your time advocating for with arguably much more fruitful results.