“The only folks who were being held were the kids of color, who were being charged with these ridiculous, trumped-up felony cases. And that was just really, really enraging,” said Jessica Heyman, a New York County Defender Services attorney who handled arraignments for five protest-related cases and staffed the Good Call hotline, which offers legal aid to arrested New Yorkers. All of Heyman’s arraignment clients were people of color.“The only folks who were being held were the kids of color, who were being charged with these ridiculous, trumped-up felony cases. And that was just really, really enraging.”
People march through the street in south Brooklyn to protest police violence and racism, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. (Photo: Carter Sherman/VICE News)
"The officers were on my back and I wasn't focusing on anything other than, "My God, is this when I'm gonna die? For no particular reason other than just covering the protests?" — V. Matthew King-Yarde, 42, arrested by the NYPD on May 31. (Photo: Joe Hill/VICE News)
“I'm a white man who graduated from a prestigious university and my cellmates are Black men. And it doesn't matter who they are, what they've done. But because they're Black men, they were treated very, very differently from me." — Sterling Strother, 21, arrested by the NYPD on June 2 and 3. (Photo: Joe Hill/VICE News)
"I was just like, yo, no one's gonna see me get arrested. Like, if something happens to me, like, who's gonna see this? Like, I'm surrounded by police and they're just gonna, like, protect each other, like if anything happens to me, you know. That's what was racing through my mind." — Dante Campbell, 21, arrested by the NYPD on May 29. (Joe Hill/VICE News)