City Manager Mark Washington on April 25, 2022 shared the following message with the Downtown community:
There was significant downtown activation for events Saturday night at several venues. A demonstration was held and many of the protestors gathered at Veterans Park for a rally for a couple of hours, marched downtown without disrupting major events/venues, spent a few hours in front of the police department and then returned to the park.
There were no arrests made, no injuries and no reported damage as protestors exercised their constitutional rights. I made several site visits and interacted with attendees at large events, and everyone indicated they felt safe. Friday night and Saturday were good nights with almost 30,000 people downtown for events.
I want to reemphasize that a safe community occurs with the activation of space and increased presence of people in public spaces, roadways and in businesses. The presence of people along with other environmental design factors reduces the amount of available, unmonitored, and unattended property where potential crime or damage can occur and also increases the citizen surveillance of activities to make sure potential bad actors know there are nearby witnesses.
For two weekends in a row, we hosted events where people with very different political ideologies gathered and co-existed peacefully in our community. While there were many situational plans about what could go wrong, we saw what America could be if people with differing views had the liberty to express them in a safe way.
A safe community also occurs when residents of color feel like they are safe from excessive use of force and over-policing. That was the cry in 2020 when so many people nationally indicated they felt unsafe and that continues to be the reason for the current protests. We have to make sure all of our residents feel safe in their neighborhoods as well as downtown.
The current social tension that exists in our city due to Patrick Lyoya’s killing has to make us better. We do have better emergency response plans today than in 2020 but still have more work ahead of us to restore trust in our communities of color and create better plans to make sure all people can prosper.
There will be some hard conversations and decisions ahead of us related to Police Reform and other efforts to restore trust and increase opportunities for communities of color, immigrants and refugees.