Incident

Incident Description

While playing basketball with friends, two young residents got into a physical altercation. Buffalo Police arrived on the scene to break it up, and one of the young men informed the cops that there was no need to intervene. “We fight every day and we would be friends the next day,” explained the young man. Despite his attempts to de-escalate what he believed to be a non-threatening situation, the police soon spiraled out of control.

Two police quickly multiplied to thirty as residents gathered around the unfolding scene. At one point, an officer even drove his motorcycle through the crowd of boys as the remaining police ordered the by-standers to return to their homes. Irate that the reckless officer had hit their sons, two mothers and a reverend approached the officers. They had underestimated the hostility of the police.

An attempt to address one incident of violence instigated even more physical abuse as the officers lashed out at the residents who dared to confront them. According to community members, “Two more Police officers came and they tried to arrest Rev. Bryant, pulled a gun on him, hit one of the mothers in the head, and then again the Precinct #10 cops came, riot ready—pulling their guns out, swinging their sticks at us and telling us to go home.”

Community Response

After the Police Violence that community experienced, community members initially went home and waited until about midnight until folks went out with the intention of causing property damage. There may not have appeared to be much damage on the first night, however the visceral reaction to over policing and brutality in the Lakeview Project was not confined to the West Side of Buffalo.

The chaos spread like wildfire onto the East Side where most of the Black population resided. The very next night after Molotov cocktails exploded on the West Side, the Buffalo Evening News reported that the East Side convulsed under the weight of vandalism, fires, and looting. On Tuesday June 27th, eight people were reported injured, nine fires were set ablaze, and an estimated twenty-three people were arrested.

According to some, Mayor Sedita was partially responsible for the disturbances that were taking place because of joblessness, poor housing, and a lack of recreational facilities. “The power structure in Buffalo has contributed as much as any other factor to the disturbance in the past three nights by their indifference to the needs of all its citizens,” remarked Rev. Milton A. Williams, the President of the NAACP Buffalo Chapter. He railed against: “…the retailers who have refused over the years to hire Negroes in numbers comparable to the number of Negroes in the community…A mayor who permits his departments to operate recreational areas in a most deplorable condition which mirrors the contempt of the white community for this area…A Board of Education and the head of our School Department who claim insight and concern for the poor area schools but who failed to provide $50,000 for the operation of the public school playgrounds in a $51 Million budget.”