PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Swissvale and Edgewood Youth Stand Up Police Harassment
by Morgan Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006 at 1:50 AM

On Saturday around 50 people protested Swissvale and Edgewood Police treatment of people of color and youth.

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Angered by their treatment by the Swissvale and Edgewood Police Departments, several teenagers in those East End neighborhoods have organized a loose group, called “Let's Stand Up,” to respond to police misconduct in their communities. Last Saturday, August 26th, around 50 people participated in the group's first public protest.

Marching behind a homemade banner – a bedsheet spray-painted with the words “Stop Police Racism” – the protest marched from Edgewood Town Center to Regent Square and then back to the center of Swissvale. Protesters yelling “Racism means we've got to fight back” and “No Justice, No Peace; No Racist Police” attracted a large amount of support from bystanders – drivers honked and held raised fists out of windows, pedestrians ran to catch up.

Ben Johnson, 15, is one of the founders of Let's Stand Up. He said that growing up, he had always noticed differences in the way police treat of people of color. It was an incident at a movie night in a neighborhood park, however, that inspired him to start Let's Stand Up. That evening, said Johnson “... a group of white kids came over shouting the n-word at a group of black kids . . . the police [then] came over told the black kids that if they did not get of the field, off the premises, that they were going to be arrested. The white kids, nothing happened to them.”

In another incident, Johnson says he and a group of five or six others were handing out flyers about police misconduct in Swissvale when “three cop cars pulled up, told us all to sit down [on the curb] and threatened to give us fines and arrests.”

This harassment escalated: shortly before the August 26th protest, Edgewood Police called Johnson and told him to come into the Police Station. There, says Johnson several officers told him “... all the reasons it would be bad for having [the protest] in Edgewood . . . and when I told him we were going to have it anyway, he kept up. Other officers from Edgewood were threatening me and telling me that I would be arrested.”

Despite these and other threats to the young organizers, Saturday's protest was free of arrests; at least three Swissvale Police cars lurked around the march, but all kept their distance.

At the end of the march, throats sore from yelling, but obviously excited by the success of their first action, several of the Let's Stand Up organizers walked back to Edgewood Town Center, vowing to keep pressure on both the Swissvale and Edgewood Police Departments, “We're going to keep it going, keep it going, and take the next steep.”