A Metropolitan Police Department station sustained damage Tuesday night during a protest over the police-involved death of a young Black man on Friday, several news outlets reported.
Protesters smashed a squad car window and some window panes at the 4th Police District station in the 6000 block of Georgia Avenue NW, and threw rocks and bricks at officers, according to DCIst.com.
Protesters were demanding accountability from MPD after witnesses claimed police chased Karon Hylton, 20, who was riding a rented moped without a helmet. They said his death was part “of a pattern of police harassment of young Black men in the neighborhood.”
The police report on the incident states that officers turned on their emergency lights and attempted to conduct a traffic stop on Hylton Friday night because he was riding a moped without a helmet on a sidewalk. Hylton reportedly pulled the moped out of an alley, hit a passenger vehicle and later died of his injuries.
“Add ’riding a moped with no helmet on the sidewalk’ on the list of things you can be killed by the police for while Black,” tweeted protester Anthony Lorenzo Green, an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner and Black Lives Matter organizer.
Janeese Lewis George, who is running for the D.C. Council, also attended the protest and tweeted that she and council member Trayon White helped Hylton’s family view “some’’ of the police body camera footage of the incident.
Ms. George added that it “was ridiculous” that police used smoke bombs and flash bangs during the protest.
“Having to see a family mourn and then get sprayed was terrible,” she tweeted. “The call for justice, transparency, real accountability and open communications [still] remain.”
MPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent Wednesday.
• Emily Zantow can be reached at ezantow@washingtontimes.com.
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