KC protesters peacefully march through Plaza, Westport with no police in sight
Protesters marched peacefully through Country Club Plaza and Westport on Thursday night without any sign of a police presence on the seventh straight day of demonstrations in Kansas City spurred by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The marchers blocked intersections to the annoyance of motorists. They took a knee outside Kelly’s Westport Inn and shouted at the bartenders to close for the night. But there was no violence as they marched on and darkness fell.
The march began several hours into the protest, with a much smaller crowd than on previous nights, when clashes with Kansas City police led to scores of arrests and clouds of tear gas.
But tensions had been diminishing the last few nights, and Thursday’s demonstration was comparatively calm, yet plenty spirited.
With the temperature topping 90 in the late afternoon hours, a few dozen people began gathering across from the Plaza in Mill Creek Park, site of protests since Saturday.
By 5 p.m., about 70 folks had gathered in the shade, holding up signs, not knowing what the rest of the afternoon and evening would bring. A moment of silence was observed as traffic flowed freely by for the first time in days. Later, came the chanting and the speeches.
As the crowd grew, 74-year-old J.J Johnson cranked up the volume on a giant boom box and shared some tunes with those around him in celebration of the community’s condemnation of police brutality everywhere.
“It’s a time to rejoice because now somebody is listening,” the Kansas City native said.
After some of the protesters sang and danced in the park. They kneeled.
“This is not a party,” someone cried. They chanted “Black lives matter” and then around 7 one group of protesters walked west along the sidewalk along 47th Street as a small bunch hung behind within sight of the J.C. Nichols Fountain.
The strode through the Plaza, with some remarking on the racist views of man who built the shopping center a century ago. Then the group headed peacefully north on Main Street, west on 43rd Street and north on Broadway toward Westport.
There were no barricades or lines of police officers in riot gear to stop them. After two nights of relatively calm protesting, police decided to ratchet down security measures.
“We opened up the streets, and so there hasn’t been a need for officers near there to block things off,” Sgt. Jake Becchina, a Kansas City police spokesperson, said in an email while the march was in progress. “We are ready and able to respond to any issues that may arise.”
Tensions have been easing since the early days of the nightly demonstrations, when confrontations between protesters and police at times turned violent. Police made 230 arrests during the first six nights of protests, but the number of people arrested has been declining. Only four were taken into custody Wednesday, down from 25 the night before, according to Becchina.
Police announced mid-afternoon Thursday that for the first time in several days all streets were back open through the Plaza. But the stores and other businesses there remained closed, as they have been since Saturday afternoon.
Those businesses had planned to reopen on Monday, but extended the closures after violence erupted over the weekend and windows were broken.
As Thursday’s protest wound down, just beyond those streets, a crowd of more than 100 stood in place for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on Ward Parkway.
As almost everyone in America now knows, that’s how long white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee onto the neck of Floyd, the 46-year-old black man whose death sparked protests across the nation.
Chauvin would not let up, even after Floyd repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe.
This story was originally published June 4, 2020 at 7:20 PM.
