PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Hundreds of protesters marched in Philadelphia for the second weekend in a row amid nationwide demonstrations demanding deep changes to policing in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Organizers of one march down Broad Street to the planned site of a new police headquarters building in the center of the city proposed that the police budget be decreased by about 50 percent and more money be provided for services such as libraries, parks and recreation and health and education services.
Mayor Jim Kenney had proposed a $14 million increase to the police budget in the coming fiscal year but said last week he would pull back that request. Fourteen of the city’s 17 council members had signed a letter objecting to the funding increase and calling for the city to “recalibrate” budget priorities.
Police earlier shut down central Philadelphia streets and also closed Interstate 676, which runs through the center, between I-76 and I-95.
Protesters also gathered earlier in the day in west Philadelphia at the site of the police bombing of the radical group MOVE’s row home headquarters 3 1/2 decades ago that caused an inferno that killed 11 people and destroyed more than 60 homes.
Former mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr., who led the city at the time of the 1985 bombing, published an op-ed in the British newspaper the Guardian last month calling for a formal apology from the city, saying after 35 years “it would be helpful for the healing of all involved, especially the victims of this terrible event.”
Floyd, who was black, died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into Floyd’s neck even as he pleaded for air and stopped moving.
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