Photo from tweet by @AshAgony
A Black Lives Matter march in Harlem to honor the nine people murdered in the mass shooting in South Carolina ended last night with several arrests and one man being hospitalized following an altercation with police.
After dozens of people gathered outside a state office building on 125th Street for a vigil for the members of Emanuel A.M.E. Church who were shot and killed by a white supremacist in Charleston, demonstrators began marching and chanting through the streets of West Harlem.
Near the intersection of 104th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, police tackled and arrested a young woman.
A short while later, 27-year-old Christen Conyers was arrested and charged with felony assault of a police officer, resisting arrest, two counts of disorderly conduct, obstructing vehicular traffic, and harassment in the second degree.
A lawyer representing Conyers, Kenneth Perry, says his client is believed to be the man on the bike in the video below, who just happened upon the protest as it came through the neighborhood.
Around the 30-second mark, a white-shirted police officer stops the man on the bike, seemingly for no reason.
Perry says Conyers, who lives three blocks away on Amsterdam Avenue, was taken to the precinct before being transported to Harlem Hospital for injuries after his arrest.
“He was beaten up, apparently by the police,” Perry said. Speaking to the charge of assaulting an officer his client faces, Perry says “he must have hit the cop’s fists with his head.”
An NYPD spokeswoman could not provide any information on the additional arrests.