50 march in Manchester 'to raise awareness about the abuse of power here'

Mar. 7—MANCHESTER — Fifty activists and community members took to the streets of Saturday afternoon to rally after what leaders say is just the latest incident of racial injustice by the police.

"The idea is to raise awareness about the abuse of power here," Keren Prescott, PowerUp CT founder and the rally's organizer, said in reference to a recent arrest by the Manchester Police Department.

Police arrested 26-year-old Dwight James Newton-Batchelor on Feb. 26 after a reported argument at the Hawthorn Suites Hotel, where Newtown-Batchelor and his wife were staying.

A 22-second video shared to PowerUp's Facebook page, shows Newton-Batchelor being arrested by police while his wife, Vicky Batchelor, asks why he's being arrested. Children in the room can be heard crying in the background. In the caption, Batchelor wrote that her husband was cleaning with a broom, listening to music while she was in the bathroom.

Newton-Batchelor was charged with second-degree breach of peace and resisting arrest.

"When you repeatedly have these instances where we're not holding [the police] accountable, that is how they begin to escalate to George Floyd, to Jacob Blake, to Brianna Taylor," Prescott said. "When you don't check it at a small infraction. When you don't check that abuse of power, in the most-simplest form. That's how it escalates into losing Black and brown lives unnecessarily.

"And so as a community every single time something like this happens, we have to as a community say, 'We see you. We know what the report says. We know that you feel you have a legal reason to do X, Y, and Z, but we still see you.' "

Starting around 2 p.m., protesters began to arrive at the corner of Main and Center streets across from Town Hall for the Rally for Justice and march, nearly a year after the fatal police shooting of resident Jose Soto during an arrest.

Protesters gathered there for about 45 minutes, raising their fists and holding up signs with words like "Black Lives Matter" and "Racism Is A Public Health Crisis," before beginning their mile-long march to the Police Department at 239 E. Middle Turnpike.

During this time, Prescott and two officers got into a disagreement over where the protesters would be walking — exclusively on the sidewalk or on the sidewalk and on the road — and what route they would take.

Lt. Keith Dunnigan, one of the officers on the scene, said he and another officer dropped by to ensure the safety of everyone at the rally.

Initially, Dunnigan said Prescott had asked for cars to block intersections, but he said that wasn't something the department could allow as it would be a liability if someone got hit by a car.

Eventually, the details got hashed out — though some remained unhappy with the arrangement — and the protesters marched on the sidewalks, with several police cruisers and flashing lights in tow, their voices ringing through the streets as they chanted "Black Lives Matter," "Silence is Violence," "Matter is the minimum" and more.

Every few feet, a protester would stick a tiny homemade red flag in the hardened ground that read "Declare racism a public crisis now."

Across from East Cemetery was a flagpole with a blue Trump 2024 flag rippling in the wind. The protesters placed several of the red flags at the flagpole's base.

In between the chants, music blasted from a set of portable speakers being pulled along, playing songs by Black artists, such as "Stand Up (From Harriet)" by Cynthia Erivo and "A Change Is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke.

Once all 50 protesters arrived, they assembled in a single-file horizontal line in front of the department.

Prescott and fellow PowerUp CT member Melina Floyd, of East Hartford, spoke.

They demanded the Manchester Police Department create a civilian review board and take down the thin blue line flag that flies outside the station. It is seen by some as support for law enforcement police but by Prescott and others as a symbol of opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement.

"It has to come down. If you're going to fly that flag, then I have every right to go up there hang my Black Lives Matter flag," Prescott said, which was met with cheers by the crowd.

Floyd then talked about fear, reminding everyone that there was nothing to fear about a Black man with a broom.

"Enough is enough. So we're going to be here. We have residents of the town. We have residents of the surrounding towns. We're going to be here. We're going to remember all of these little things," said Floyd, followed by chants of "Enough is enough" from her and the crowd.

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