Hundreds march in Fort Worth silent protest after police arrest group leaders
The day after Fort Worth police arrested three protesters downtown, Enough is Enough and Black Love Fort Worth held a silent protest starting at the Tarrant County Courthouse at 6:30 p.m.
About 200 people, some with duct tape over their mouths with the words “I can’t breathe” written in marker, marched silently downtown from about 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday. Officers on bikes, motorcycles and horses followed them from a distance.
Outside restaurants such as Del Frisco’s and The Cheesecake Factory, protesters held their fists in the air and knelt. One woman in the group was visibly emotional as they took a knee in Sundance Square. When the protesters reached Flying Saucer, customers on the patio applauded and cheered for them.
Protest leader Seychelle Leake cautioned protesters to stay off sidewalks, stay 3 feet away from police officers and not interact with police or other people. She passed out slips of paper for protesters to show to police if they were confronted.
“With all due respect officer,” the paper said, “I wish to invoke my 4th and 5th Amendment rights. I do not answer questions from law enforcement without my attorney present nor do I agree to a search of my person or property. I would like to leave now, am I free to go.”
The precautions were due to police arresting three protesters on Saturday evening. Lucid Shinobi, 23, Natasha “Nysse” Nelson, 35, and Manuel Arzate-Sifuentes, 21, were arrested downtown during a nonviolent demonstration.
Shinobi was released Sunday afternoon, protest leader Rod Smith said. The groups contacted ACLU for legal help and had three lawyers working to have the charges dropped.
“We will fight this to the end. We’re not going to let this go unnoticed,” Smith said. “We’re going to do everything we can do to blow the whistle.”
Hours before the arrests, Smith and other protesters sat down with city leaders, including Mayor Betsy Price, City Manager David Cooke and Police Chief Ed Kraus, to discuss their demands. The meeting went well, Smith said. Price tweeted about the meeting and said they “discussed calls to action and ways we can make progress in the community.”
Price said she would take the protesters’ demands to a work session on June 23 after an attorney reviews them to see which demands are legally possible, a city spokeswoman said.
Smith said Price admitted there was a “race problem within the Fort Worth Police Department.”
The group told Price that some “rogue” Fort Worth officers use “scare tactics” against them. Smith said protesters saw those tactics firsthand hours later when police arrested Shinobi, Nelson and Arzate-Sifuentes.
“They are using this to infringe upon our constitutional right to protest, and they are trying to stop us and use this as a scare tactic,” Smith said. “We will not be intimidated. We are not afraid. We are not going anywhere.”
A city spokeswoman said Price didn’t know anything about the arrests.
Nelson was charged with “failure to identify.” She “was warned regarding use of a bull horn to hail individual people in violation of city ordinance,” according to a police incident report. “She continued and was issued a citation for this offense. While being detained she gave false [information] to the officers.”
Shinobi is charged with three counts of interference with public duties; police say he committed those Class B misdemeanors about 8:15 p.m. Thursday in the 100 block of North Houston Street.
Arzate-Sifuentes was arrested about 8 p.m. Saturday on suspicion of obstructing a highway or passageway.
This story was originally published June 14, 2020 at 6:57 PM.
