2020 YEAR IN REVIEW
What protests against police brutality looked like in Queens
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
Even during a global pandemic
already disproportionately
affecting Black, Brown
and low-income communities,
police brutality remained one of
the reasons those same communities
feared for their lives. As a
result, people took to the streets
to call for police accountability
and systemic change.
The brutal police killing
of George Floyd, a 46-year-old
Minneapolis man accused of using
a fake $20 bill who was, as a
result of a 911 call, asphyxiated
by a policeman kneeling on his
neck for nearly nine minutes —
which millions watched after a
video recording by a passerby
was shared on social media —
is widely considered the impetus
for the Black Lives Matter
(BLM) protests that erupted
nationally and globally.
But Floyd’s was far from the
only story of Black people having
deadly police encounters
in the early months of 2020.
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old
essential worker in Kentucky,
was asleep in her home before
police executed a no-knock warrant
and killed her in March,
and Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-yearold
man, was jogging before two
white men shot him in a suburban
Georgia neighborhood in
February.
As a result of inaction from
the police and judicial system,
protests calling for an end to
police brutality began to take
place in New York City at the
end of May — and with it, an aggressive
police response including
mass arrests, and a shortlived
curfew instated by Mayor
Bill de Blasio.
One of the first protests in
Queens took place in Jackson
Heights, where thousands of
people united to march for police
accountability. The demonstration
culminated in front
of the 115th Precinct, where
community members and some
elected officials also called for
accountability from all government
structures.
In another early protest, a
captain took a knee with demonstrators
in Jamaica. The moment
was captured by Esther
Lauren, a Queens nurse on the
front lines of COVID, who offered
to help fellow protesters,
should they need it.
“I think people should be
finding their role and knowing
how to play it very well. I knew
that I am a nurse, and my role is
to be a nurse at all times,” Lauren
told QNS.
For the rest of the summer,
barely a day went by without a
demonstration.
Demonstrations and vigils,
most of them non-violent, occurred
in many neighborhoods
across Queens, from the Rockaways
to Astoria. Many of these
demonstrations were organized
by mutual aid groups and individual
community members
who came together as a result of
the unrest, such as the Queens
Liberation Project.
In June, hundreds joined a
paddle out in Rockaway Beach,
organized by the Black Surfing
Association in memory of Floyd
and Taylor.
In another instance at Rockaway
Beach, the Urban Youth
Collaborative, a grassroots
coalition of students fighting
for transformative education
reform, arranged a banner that
read “Police Free Schools!” to
fly over the beach.
In Ridgewood, two mothers
organized the “Kids Peace
Movement,” a day of socially
distant talks and a march that
gave kids space to express their
own thoughts about the civil
unrest.
“Statistics state that one in
1,000 young Black males have
died at the hands of the police,”
said Emmanuel Gray, a 9-yearold
who gave a speech at the
event. “This is scary to me because
I’ve always looked up to
the police as protectors and role
models in our community. But
as I’m getting older and older,
it’s becoming more confusing
to me when I hear the stories of
Black males being harassed and
killed … just because our skin
color appears to be a threat.”
Later in the summer, artists
gathered for a more light-hearted
yet emotional event outside
of the Queens Museum to honor
the lives of Taylor and Vanessa
TIMESLEDGER | QNS.8 COM | DEC. 25-DEC. 31, 2020
Guillén, a 20-year-old U.S.
Army specialist based in Texas
who, after public and national
outcry, was found dead due to
an attack from a male soldier.
Even high school students
participated in the racial reckoning.
At Archbishop Molloy
High School, current and
former students called on the
school administrators to address
the BLM movement and
make improvements to their
own reported instances of racism.
The school responded with
the creation of a Council for Diversity
and Inclusion.
The protests in Queens
weren’t nearly as violent as
those that took place in Manhattan
and Brooklyn, with barely
any reported instances of looting
— an attempted looting at
the Queens Mall was stopped
by police and a false alarm in
Corona caused local officials to
regret their approach.
As weeks of protest went on,
a wave of pro-police, or “Back
the Blue” rallies, emerged in
several neighborhoods, including
in Middle Village, Woodside
and Bayside.
“The police are necessary
and part of being in a city that’s
safe,” said a couple marching at
a “Blue Lives Matter” rally in
Woodside. “We feel the rhetoric
and the message has been lost.”
While non-violent demonstrations
prevailed in Queens,
there were instances of police
force and tense encounters between
community members.
In Whitestone, protesters
who hung signs in support of
the BLM movement were met
with racist and menacing attacks
from a 54-year-old Flushing
resident, who not only
brandished a claw-like weapon,
but also allegedly tried to mow
down protesters. The man was
later charged by Queens District
Attorney Melinda Katz.
Right before a large pro-police
rally at Bayside’s Crocheron
Park began, rally attendees
clashed with a small group of
BLM demonstrators. The short,
yet heated encounter resulted
in one BLM demonstrator getting
tackled by police and arrested
while a woman with the
BLM group got slapped across
the face by an older white man
wearing an NYPD shirt. Witnesses
told QNS the unidentified
man also spit at BLM protesters,
but police didn’t make
any attempts to detain him.
Attempts to get the 111th
Precinct to respond to the woman’s
complaints, however, went
unanswered.
Following the New York Police
Benevolent Association’s
(PBA) endorsement of former
President Donald Trump, Bayside’s
BLM group staged a surprise
protest outside the home
of PBA President Pat Lynch.
About four dozen demonstrators
were met with barricades
blocking Lynch’s home and other
streets near it, with a heavy
police presence following them
from start to finish.
One of the last large-scale
protests in Queens took place
in Maspeth, where several
dozen demonstrators marched
through the mostly conservative
neighborhood to protest
police unions and QAnon. The
protest ended after flags were
taken from private homes and
burned on the street — which
many residents and local electeds
objected to.
A resounding message of the
monthslong protests was to defund
the police.
In order to see concrete results,
activists and elected officials
called for at least a $1
billion cut from the NYPD’s
budget, which has an overall
budget of about $10 billion, as
the city negotiated its budget
for the 2021 fiscal year. Many
felt those funds should be directed
toward public services
that directly help communities
of color and are oftentimes underfunded
or the first to be cut
during a budget crisis, like the
one the pandemic brought onto
the city.
In anticipation of the final
budget, the city and state
passed some reforms: a ban on
chokeholds and the repeal of
50-A, which stopped the public
from uncovering an officer’s
disciplinary record.
While de Blasio said he’d cut
$1 billion from the NYPD’s budget,
later comments from City
Council members and reports
noted that amount wasn’t actually
cut. Most Queens Council
members voted in favor of it,
while the few who voted “no”
cited the NYPD’s cuts as either
too much or not enough.
Throughout the months of
protests, de Blasio announced
task forces to address the inequalities
that persist in NYC
and followed in Washington
D.C.’s footsteps by painting a
“Black Lives Matter” street
mural in big, bold yellow across
some city streets, including in
Jamaica.
But the mayor appeared
to have a hard time fully condemning
the police’s forceful
response that hundreds of protesters
experienced and even
more watched online from protest
footage.
Attorney General Letitia
James conducted an investigation
of the summer’s protests,
under the direction of Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, which concluded
that the NYPD needs
more reform. A report by the
New York City Department of
Investigation, which de Blasio
asked for, found the NYPD did
use excessive force during the
summer protests, affirming
the accounts by many activists
and protestors across the city.
In a video statement, de Blasio
agreed with the results.
A culmination of circumstances
added to the historic
civil unrest that took place in
cities across the U.S. and the
world, from a deadly virus to record
unemployment rates — but
it was the continuous killing
of innocent Black individuals
by those meant to protect the
public that forced the country
to once again face the systemic
racism that makes up the fabric
of its history and present day.
Photo by Dean Moses