‘We didn’t know there was a curfew’: Dallas protesters spent up to 36 hours in jail
Sydney Bright spent 36 hours in custody after being arrested on a curfew violation during protests in Dallas.
The curfew had been enacted Sunday and was set to begin at 7 p.m.
“We didn’t even know there was a curfew and we just wanted to protest peacefully,” Bright said on Thursday.
When Bright and her friends got to downtown Dallas on Sunday, they met with a small group of about nine protesters. They knelt on the ground, put their hands up and began to chant.
“Hands up, don’t shoot.”
By that point, it was about 15 minutes after curfew and Bright, 21, of Arlington, had already walked by several groups of police officers. None of them warned her of the curfew, Bright said.
Then, they heard a warning over a loudspeaker.
“You are in violation of curfew, you have time to get to your car,” the voice can be heard saying on a video taken by Bright. She and the protesters began to run back to their vehicles. Then she said police started shooting rubber bullets toward the group.
“Two minutes later, we were arrested,” Bright said.
She and four other protesters who were arrested between Saturday and Monday in Dallas told the Star-Telegram about their experiences. Some of them chose to speak out after seeing a Star-Telegram video of Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall saying protesters would just be “processed for curfew violation” when asked what would happen to those arrested.
“So they’re not going to be be held?” the reporter asked.
“Right,” Hall said. “It’s curfew violation processing. It’s really not … nobody’s putting anybody in prison for the rest of their lives … it’s a curfew violation, they’re OK, they’ll be fine. Trust me.”
The video had been viewed almost 29,000 times by Thursday afternoon.
All four people who talked to the Star-Telegram spent more than 16 hours in custody. They thought initially they would be charged with Class C misdemeanors but were charged with Class B (which comes with a harsher punishment) for allegedly violating a state emergency order. One was charged with inciting a riot.
The Dallas Police Department arrested 185 protesters between Friday and Monday morning. During Monday night’s protest — when marchers were trapped on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge and arrested en mass — 696 people were detained, according to the Associated Press.
Spending a day in jail
Antonio Nickerson, 24, of Denton, brought six cases of water with him to Dallas on Saturday. He wanted to hand them out to the crowds of people gathering in the heat.
“I wanted to go protest but I felt like it was my responsibility, not only as a black man, but a young, able-bodied, strong black man to help,” he said. “I felt like if I can go out there and bring water, I can use my time within the civil rights fight to serve others.”
He spent most of the day with friends, chanting and handing out water. Then around 6 p.m., an officer shouted from his patrol vehicle that Nickerson needed to leave the area because they were cleaning it of protesters.
“OK, well do that then,” Nickerson yelled back, not considering himself a protester.
A video taken by Nickerson shows two officers approaching him. When Nickerson told police he was out there to help anyone who got teargassed, an officer reached behind and detained him.
“They took me over to a police van and there was one guy sitting there and we were in there for about an hour before we went to the police station,” he said.
From there, his story is similar to others.
Their information was taken, they were placed into holding cells and eventually brought in front of a judge who set a personal recognizance bond — meaning none of them had to pay up front.
Nickerson said the atmosphere in the jail was tense.
“They definitely did not like us,” he said.
They were given bologna sandwiches, which one protester said had expired months earlier.
Nickerson was in jail for 16 hours and charged with participation in a riot.
“There was no rioting,” he said.
The next day, Bright and her friends were arrested. Bright’s impression was that the officers didn’t know what was going to happen with the people they detained.
“They kept us in zip ties on the side of the road for about an hour,” she said. “We were asking them, ‘What are we being arrested for? Are we being arrested?’ and they just said we might be taking you to jail or we might just release you.”
Once they were put into a police van, they sat there for another two hours before they were taken for processing. When jail staffers were going over everybody’s information, Bright told them she needed to stay hydrated because of a diagnosed bladder condition, and that she has bipolar disorder and needed her medicine.
“Instead of giving me my medicine for that, they asked me if I was suicidal,” she said. “I told him no but they put me on suicide watch and I was alone.”
She was shocked when she learned she had to go in front of a judge.
“We thought we’d just be getting tickets and getting released,” she said.
Bright was released 36 hours after her arrest.
Aliyah Weekley, who was also arrested that day, said she was told she’d be in the jail about eight to 12 hours.
She was there for 24.
Getting trapped on a bridge
Brooke Al Mawla of Fort Worth went to the protest Monday night in Dallas, as she had on Friday and Sunday nights.
She said she felt she needed to be there.
“I have the privilege of waking up every morning knowing a simple traffic stop won’t end my life,” the 22-year-old said. “If attending this means that people of color have the same privilege, absolutely, I’d do it again.”
But she feels she and other protesters — who had tear gas and rubber bullets fired at them — were set up when they got trapped on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge.
She said they were told by law-enforcement officers to go up the bridge. On their way up, she saw SWAT team members and the National Guard. Once up there, she saw Dallas police, FBI and state troopers.
When she heard shots fired, she turned around to go back down the bridge, but the path to get off either direction was blocked by police.
“We were blocked in on both sides,” Mawla said. “It was 100% a set up.”
Dallas Police Chief Hall “needs to resign,” she said.
“She said her goal was the safety of the city but she put us in danger because we were fired at from both sides and blocked in,” she said. “I will file a complaint against her every day until she resigns.”
Mawla was among those detained at the bridge.
Her wrists were zip tied behind her back so tightly that it cut into her wrist. Bright and Weekley also said their ties dug into the wrists, leaving bruises and marks.
When Mawla asked an officer if the zip tie could be loosened, she was told “they aren’t for comfort.”
But she knew she was lucky because a woman near her had been hit in the face with a rubber bullet.
She stayed on the ground with other protesters for what felt like hours.
“I was terrified,” she said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Mawla said she kept thinking: “That’s my First Amendment right they are stripping from me. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening to me.”
Eventually, a state trooper gave her a new set of zip ties that were looser. And she and others were put on a bus.
“She said we would be booked,” Mawla said.
Ultimately, though, they were taken back to the courthouse where the protest began and were told they could leave. Hall said on Thursday that the department would not pursue charges for protesters who were arrested on the bridge Monday night.
Continuing the fight
Despite their experiences, the protesters either peacefully gathered again, or plan to.
“It will definitely be before curfew,” Bright said about going back out on Friday. “I feel like, as a white person, I can stand in the front lines and not be as scared as my brothers and sisters who are black. I feel like I have a job to help people realize that it’s going to take everybody to stand up and change.”
Mawla isn’t going to stop “until there’s justice for George Floyd and others,” she said.
Nickerson has already protested post-arrest.
“I feel like I owe it to everybody to keep marching alongside them,” he said. “It’s my time to be out there and fight.”
This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
