Raising signs, flags and fists, about 200 protesters walked through the streets of Elizabeth City in North Carolina on Wednesday night following a judge’s ruling, which denied the immediate release of police video footage of the killing of Andrew Brown last week.
The evening’s march wound its way through the flat streets of the majority Black city of roughly 18,000 in the state’s coastal plain near the Outer Banks.
The crowd blocked off several intersections, chanting “release the tape” and “20 seconds, not enough,” in reference to the short clip of body-camera footage that Brown’s family have been permitted to see.
“You’re just making it worse by not being transparent,” said Dustin Sidebottom, 50, an Elizabeth City resident who had been arrested protesting on Tuesday but was back on Wednesday, waving a large Black Lives Matter flag.
Sidebottom said officials’ handling of the Brown case has created a breach of trust that will be extremely difficult to repair.