NORWALK, Conn. – The silence from Norwalk minority community leaders ended Tuesday with a statement from the Norwalk branch NAACP, expressing “heartfelt condolences” to the families of two slain New York City police officers and emphasizing that recent protests are a fight against police brutality, not against police officers.
Norwalk Branch NAACP President Darnell Crosland, State Rep. Bruce Morris (D-140), the Rev. Lindsay Curtis, Norwalk Fire Chief Denis McCarthy and NAACP members Daisy Franklin, Darlene Young, Larry Johnson, Bobby Burgess, Jackie Steiner and Carol Ward met with the press at the entrance to City Hall to make their declaration. Crosland said Mayor Harry Rilling was expected but couldn’t make it, and that Norwalk Police Chief Thomas Kulhawik is on vacation but expressed support for the effort.
“Civil rights was won in a nonviolent process. As president of the Norwalk branch NAACP, I urge all of you to remember this fact,” Crosland said. “… We do not, we will not stand idly by and condone police brutality, but we will not, I repeat, we will not respond to it in a violent and uncivilized manner.”
Morris said the NAACP had planned to put out “a proactive statement” to address the nationwide turmoil inspired in part by the deaths of black men in Ferguson, Mo. and Staten Island during encounters with police, but that will wait until after New Year’s Day because of the fatal ambush of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. This is in response to a request from NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio for a quiet period without protests until after their funerals.
Rilling met with community leaders in early December to discuss the tension as protests swept the country. Kulhawik said a joint statement would be released the next week, but no statement has been forthcoming.
Two members of Norwalk’s African American community on Sunday said such a statement would be helpful.
“I think it would have been a good thing,” Anita Osborne said. “I think more people would be aware.”
“I think it could show they care. The flip side is it looks like they don’t care about anyone,” Erika Foster said.
Curtis and Crosland were part of the discussion at the meeting.
“We want to put out an intelligent statement,” Curtis said. “We want to make sure we could come and find areas of, not necessarily commonality, but areas of negotiation. We just didn’t want to ‘throw something out there.’ There are things that our community wants. There are things that I am not sure that the city can live with. So before we come out and it looks like it’s confusion, we want to come out in a unified stance, as best as we can. We may not be able to do that, but that’s what negotiations are all about.”
“After we met with the mayor’s office, we felt it was necessary to meet with the African-American community and tell them what’s going and hear their voices,” Crosland said. “We did that in two different meetings.”
The resultant statement includes a list of things the NAACP would like to see, including a citizens review board, he said.
“Now where we are is we’re setting up a meeting with mayor again and sharing with him the view of our independent meeting and see if together we can come up with a joint statement. So the mayor is just kind of waiting on us to get back to him and tell him what we found out,” Crosland said.
Curtis said it’s a matter of negotiations between policing and community relations.
“It’s neither all one way or the other,” Curtis said. “There’s a little bit of give and take on both ends. So that’s the negotiations we’re trying to come out with. This is not Ferguson. What we are trying to do is set up an environment so it will never be Ferguson.”
Both Curtis and Morris led prayers during the press conference. Morris said, “The words that we speak to almighty God likely will have more impact than the words we say about each other, until at least we find common ground how to interact with each other.”
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