Ongoing protests draw reaction from Dougherty Commission members

ALBANY — Dougherty County commissioners weighed in this week on the protests sparked by the killing of a black man by a Minneapolis, Minn., police officer and the calm of a weekend Albany event.

Commissioner Anthony Jones denounced a string of incidents, including other incidents in which black victims were killed and threatened in recent weeks. The soft-spoken Jones made the remarks at the end of a Tuesday commission meeting.

Jones referenced the death of George Floyd on Memorial Day in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor, a black woman fatally shot on March 13 by police in Louisville, Ky., during a no-knock raid in the middle of the night. He also referred to an incident in New York, also on Memorial Day, in which a white woman walking an unleashed dog in Central Park called 911 after telling a black bird watcher she was going to report that an “African-American man” was “threatening (her) life.”

Jones said that COVID-19 also has taken a disproportionate toll on black lives.

“I’m hurting, I’m disappointed, but thank goodness for Jesus,” Jones said. “A white police officer in Minneapolis places his knee on the neck of an African-American man, places his knee on his neck, places his hand in his pocket while his other three comrades sit there and watch while he murdered this man in broad daylight.”

Four officers, all of whom were fired several days later, responded to the call of a man attempting to buy cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill.

Several bystanders took videos of the incident, in which the officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. Floyd had been handcuffed in a police car prior to his being pulled out and placed on the pavement.

During the eight minutes and 46 seconds the officer, Darren Chauvin, has his knee on Floyd’s neck, Floyd tells police multiple times that he cannot breathe. Chauvin was charged several days later with murder and manslaughter.

One video records the officer telling Floyd twice, “Well, get up and get in the car” even as he keeps his knee on his neck and Floyd, who is motionless, said he would do so.

“The man cries before his death: ‘Mother, mother, help me,’” Jones said. “I am appalled at this. It appears African-Americans are part of a social experiment in a failing society. Thank God for social media and most of these videos cry for Jesus.”

Earlier on Memorial Day, Christian Cooper used his phone to take video of an exchange that occurred after he requested a woman place her dog on a leash, and she told him she was going to report being threatened by “an African-American man.”

The video records Cooper, a board member of the New York Audubon Society, calmly asking the woman to “please call the police.” The woman, later fired from her job after one of Cooper’s family members placed it on social media, made a hysterical call to 911.

“A black man in Central Park, bird watching, and a woman comes in; her dog is off the leash, distracting the birds,” Jones said. “She calls the police, says I’m going to tell them you’re threatening my life and you’re threatening my dog’s life.

“An African-American woman in Kentucky, her and her boyfriend are sleeping in their apartment and the police kick the door in. The boyfriend shoots one and they kill his girlfriend.”

Taylor reportedly was shot eight times. The police department has since issued new guidelines on no-knock raids — those in which officers enter a residence without knocking or announcing themselves. The suspect police were seeking did not live in Taylor’s residence and reportedly had been arrested prior to the raid being carried out.

Jones said the killing of Floyd was a contrast to the reaction to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

“An African-American man takes a knee prior to the beginning of professional football in protest about how African-American men are being killed at an alarming rate,” he said. “He is banned from playing football for the rest of his career.”

Floyd’s death has driven days of protests across the country that have even reached the White House. Some of those protests have been marked by several deaths, destruction of property, and police firing tear gas and rubber bullets into groups of protesters.

Commission Chairman Chris Cohilas and Commissioner Victor Edwards praised the presence of Albany Police Department Chief Michael Persley and Dougherty County Sheriff Kevin Sproul, county police chief Kenneth Johnson, Albany Fire Department Chief Cedric Scott and EMS director Sam Allen.

“I too want to (thank) our law enforcement leaders and the work they did in these times and obviously a very emotional time,” Cohilas said. “And I do think a lot of times the South doesn’t get credit for having better relationships than I think exist in many other communities.

“We do have community policing, and I do like the fact we have community leaders that are in the positions in law enforcement. They (protesters) held peaceful protests that were appropriate, safe, accommodating exercises of people’s First Amendment rights about what have admittedly been some tragic and horrific happenings that are uncalled for, that are appropriate subjects for peaceful protest.”

Edwards said that law enforcement agencies in the county and the city of Albany do a good job in their work, which accounts for the lack of incidents that have sparked recent protests.

“We know there is still a strong sense of racism (in the country), even indifference,” Edwards said. “We still have to have faith that God is in control. I’d like to take my hat off to the peaceful protests that they did have here on Saturday.”

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