‘The NYPD Is Out of Control’
Assemblywoman Diana Richardson was pepper-sprayed while protesting George Floyd’s death
As thousands of people around the nation take to the streets to protest the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans, many police officers are responding with violence. New York State Assemblywoman Diana Richardson has seen this violence up close. The Brooklyn representative was roughed up and pepper-sprayed by the New York Police Department at a protest in her borough last weekend. She says the department’s recent actions prove it is “out of control.”
I’m a Black woman. I am the mother of a teenage son. For decades, Black men and people of color — but Black men particularly — have continued to die at the hands of law enforcement around the country. George Floyd’s death was triggering for me and so many people across the country. The knee that was put on George Floyd’s neck is the same knee a police officer put on the neck of a young man in lower Manhattan just three weeks ago. The words George Floyd said — “I can’t breathe” — are the same words Eric Garner said in Staten Island five years ago.
On Friday, I went to the protest near the Barclays Center in solidarity with all New Yorkers, calling for police accountability and police reform. I was out there not as a…
