Beaufort says it will educate public, add police advisers after George Floyd’s death
The city of Beaufort says it will educate the public on civic involvement and tap community advisers for its police department in the wake of worldwide protests — and a march for justice planned in Beaufort for Father’s Day — following the death of George Floyd.
The city’s plans are part of a resolution City Council passed during a virtual meeting Tuesday. The document, a collaboration among city manager Bill Prokop, Councilman Stephen Murray and Police Chief Matt Clancy over the weekend, was added to the council agenda Tuesday, hours before the council meeting.
The decree acknowledges “the deep historical systematic oppression of black people in our city and worldwide, as we stand for solidarity and equality for all as we move forward.”
Among the possible actionable items, the city says:
The police department “will establish a role for community members to evaluate department activities and provide input to the chief.”
- It will create a “citizens academy” to educate people on government processes and policy and would work “to ensure diverse participation.”
Council members, all of whom are white, passed the measure unanimously.
Passing a resolution doesn’t create new rules, and specifics of how community input to police might provide oversight or more details of a proposed citizens academy haven’t been spelled out. But city officials said it’s a start and an appropriate statement in the wake of days of continued protests at a busy Beaufort intersection seeking justice for Floyd and accountability in the death of Trey Pringle, a 24-year-old Seabrook man who died in 2018 after he was forcibly restrained by Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office deputies and first responders.
“This would not have happened without you, sir,” Murray told Tim Garvin, one of the protest organizers who joined the council meeting via video conferencing.
March for justice
Harold “Mitch” Mitchell was senior class president at Robert Smalls High School when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
Mitchell, now 70, remembers working with a classmate to organize a boycott of classes on the day of King’s funeral.
He always knew he wanted to return to his hometown after his career as a military officer and airline pilot, but didn’t expect to be organizing another event denouncing racial injustice more than 50 years after King’s death. Mitchell will lead a march around downtown Beaufort on June 21 — Father’s Day — after watching continued television coverage of Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minnesota and meeting with those protesting in Beaufort.
The march will begin at 4 p.m. in Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park at Charles Street. Participants will march up Charles to Boundary Street, from Boundary to Carteret Street and down Bay Street back to the park.
Mitchell was a U.S. Marine Corps pilot before joining the U.S. Air Force reserve. He retired from the Air Force as a major general, was a former deputy inspector general and flew commercial airliners more than 30 years.
As he and his wife prepared to return to Beaufort from the Seattle area in 2015, a white supremacist killed nine worshipers during a prayer service in a Charleston church.
“It was a struggle to come back to South Carolina, and we did,” Mitchell said Tuesday. “It just seems like it’s never ending; it seems like it’s pervasive. It’s like a virus. You can’t get rid of it; you can’t legislate it away.”
Instead, Mitchell sees hope in the diverse group of faces he has seen and joined at the Boundary Street protests in recent days. He talked with his wife about what they could do to bring attention to continued injustices in a striking visual, peaceful way.
“This whole thing about the fear and discomfort most African Americans, most minorities have in the presence of police is something we have been sharing with our non-minority friends all of our life,” Mitchell said. “I just don’t think up until the raw visual of the killing of George Floyd, it didn’t really resonate with folks that this experience is real.“
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the time of the march. It will begin at 4 p.m.
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 10:53 AM.
