NEW ORLEANS — Anger erupted in U.S. cities over the weekend.
The protests were sparked in part by the death of George Floyd who died in Minneapolis police custody last Monday.
Video showed a white police officer kneeling on the African-American man’s neck for nearly nine minutes shortly before his death.
While some of the demonstrations descended into violence in other parts of the country, in New Orleans the protests remained peaceful.
“Throughout this weekend, we’ve seen numerous protests, none of which were violent and I think it’s a true testament to our city, the character of our city and the true example of how protests should be done across the country,” NOPD Supt. Shaun Ferguson said.
Ferguson called Floyd’s death “a tragic murder at the hands or the knee of a law enforcement officer.”
Before this weekend’s demonstrations in the city, he says he told his officers not to be confrontational or adversarial with protesters.
“We wanted them to have their due diligence and being able to exercise their constitutional right in voicing their opinions and we would be right there with them,” Ferguson said. “As you saw we had our motorbikes right there with them, escorting them from Duncan Plaza to our headquarters and back.”
NOPD officers are trained in a peer review program called “Ethical Policing Is Courageous” or EPIC.
LSU Health Criminologist Dr. Peter Scharf said EPIC teaches officers to prevent their own from participating in wrongdoing.
“The target in a way is not (former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin) who had his foot on Floyd’s neck, it’s the other three cops,” Scharf said. “Why didn’t they intervene.”
New Orleans actor and activist Ameer Baraka maintains just because the protests were peaceful in the city, doesn’t mean the community is any less enraged by Floyd’s death.
“For the last two or three years, people have been killed by police officers, so this is the one that broke the camel’s back,” Baraka said. “We’re seeing the reaction of a people who have been oppressed, marginalized, incarcerated, beaten and all of the above.”
Baraka said the fact many of these violent acts are caught on video, including the one in Minneapolis, makes the social injustice they reveal even more real.
“This is one of the most sophisticated reality television shows we’ve ever watched,” Baraka said. “It’s live. How to kill a black man. It’s live on television.”
Baraka and Scharf have teamed up to help train police departments on how to strengthen the relationship between law enforcement officers and the community.
“There are techniques to not inflame a bad situation,” Scharf said. “The issue in civil disorders is not how you can make things better it’s how do you keep them from getting a lot worse.”
Baraka fears this may only be the beginning of prolonged protests across the country.
“We have a president who just recently tweeted, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Baraka said. “I mean, my God, you’re threatening the people. People are angry enough.”
Supt. Ferguson does not expect the protests in New Orleans to escalate.
“We have to stay prepared in the event that it does escalate, but never the less we do not anticipate it only because we know that we have a great community,” Ferguson said.
Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng also commented on the weekend protests across the country and the death of George Floyd.
She called the circumstances surrounding Floyd’s death "horrific and heartbreaking."
“The shame of it is, the conversation right now in our country should be geared upon how this would never happen again, how do we prevent this and of course it’s been derailed with violence, it’s been derailed with lawlessness,” Lee Sheng said.
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