Protesters rally against decision in Jamar Clark shooting
About 100 demonstrators marched through downtown Minneapolis skyways Friday afternoon, calling for the prosecution of the two police officers involved in the shooting death of 24-year-old Jamar Clark last fall.
Earlier this week, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced he would not file charges against officers Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze.
Mel Reeves, organizer with the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar, urged protesters to keep voicing their demands in public.
"It's up to us now," he said. "I'm just going to be real with you. They already told us where they are. Right? So now, pressure. It's only pressure that's going to make them give it up. Pressure is going to make them give us some justice."
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Freeman said the officers' actions were justified. However, Reeves and others say they don't believe the officers' version of events.
During interviews with BCA investigators, both officers stated that Clark had a strange look on his face and that he refused to take his hands out of his pockets as they approached him outside a residence on Plymouth Avenue North on the morning of Nov. 15.
"It was a weird, uncomforting [sic] look," said Schwarze in his interview with the BCA. "My partner and I approached him, still noticing that he had his hands in his pockets."
Ringgenberg said he tried to handcuff Clark, but couldn't. So he tackled him.
During the struggle, Ringgenberg says, Clark grabbed hold of his holstered gun. Schwarze said he feared for his partner's life as well as his own. He said he put the gun close to Clark's face.
"Um, the person lying on the ground is looking directly at me and he says I'm ready to die," Schwarze said.
He shot Clark once in the head.
But demonstrators at Friday's rally, which started at the Hennepin County Government Center, called that account a fairy tale. Reeves said Freeman's decision ignored eyewitness accounts that offered a different story.
"Lots of people in our community said that Jamar Clark was handcuffed, that he was unarmed, he was thrown on the ground and he was shot by the police," Reeves said. "That's the story I'm going to believe."
However, some witnesses said they didn't see Clark in handcuffs. And BCA investigators found no physical evidence that Clark was handcuffed.
But others have said Clark was not acting aggressively and didn't deserve to die. Clark's adoptive father James told the demonstrators that he still can't believe what happened to his son.
"This is not supposed to happen when it comes to the police," James Clark said. "They supposed to serve and protect. And they told all these lies on my son — which he did not do none of this."