A 90 second video posted to Facebook appears to show a law enforcement officer or a security guard kicking a suspect being arrested by three other officers on Washington Street in downtown Providence Monday evening.
UPDATE: Providence Public Safety Commissioner Steve Pare told RI Future, “we’re pretty sure that isn’t a Providence police officer. We are checking today to see if we made any arrests related to what was depicted on the video.”
Pare said he became aware of the video yesterday. “We don’t know when this video was taken,” he said on Thursday morning. “We’re looking back over the last several nights, but if this is several months old it will be harder to identify.”
UPDATE: Paré’s assistant, Margaret Botelho email me that, “… the Providence Police Department was not involved in this incident.”
Lt. Michael Chalek of the URI police department said he hadn’t seen the video yet and indicated he wasn’t aware of such an incident. He said he would know more after watching the video. Calls to the head of URI security went unanswered.
UPDATE: There was no arrest record for the incident Monday night, but there was a rescue vehicle dispatched to the scene around 9pm, according to the Providence Fire Department. For medical confidentiality reasons the identity of the person taken from the scene could not be revealed.
Posted by Willie Vanover Jr., the cellphone video appears to show two officers attempting to control and cuff a man laying down on the sidewalk as a third officer stands with his foot on the suspect’s hip. At about 54 seconds into the video, the third officer appears to remove his foot, and then kick the suspect in the side. Seconds later the suspect is hauled to his feet and lead away.
The officer who kicked the suspect stays behind.
The video on Facebook lacks extensive description save for, “Downtown providence security at the school across from dunkin doughnut wtf is this clown stomping this man for please help me make this go viral.”
This post will updated as new information is available.
Friday night’s 
Yesterday’s “
The crowd started to build around 7pm at Burnside Park, with marchers working on their signs in the park with the materials provided by the organizers. There were less marchers this time and the crowd tended to be whiter, though there was substantial representation of people of color.
The plan was to rally at Burnside Park, march past the Providence Place Mall and to the steps of the State House, where there would be a four minute moment of silence for Mike Brown (one minute for every hour his body laid in the street) and then a “speak out” in which anyone could step forward and let loose whatever was on their mind.
The march through downtown and to the state house was guided by the police, whose red and blue lights provided an almost stereoscopic illumination. There were chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot” and “This is what democracy looks like” among others. There were many signs of support from passing motorists and mall patrons, but also one or two negative reactions.
The big surprise of the evening was finding, upon our arrival at the State House, a phalanx of police officers standing at the top of the state house steps, protecting the building. It was an intimidating reminder of police power to have between 15 and 20 armed officers silently observe the protest from on high.
There was a solemn and somber four minutes of silence, interrupted only by the occasional chime of an unmuted cellphone, then the speak out began. I’ll have a rundown of what the speakers spoke about in a later post, after I’ve sorted out all the video, but for now let me present some highlights.
The growing militarization of police forces and the crackdown on human rights is world wide, from Hong Kong to Mexico to Ferguson.
As the night wore on, and a light drizzle of rain and dropping temperatures thinned the crowd of protesters, over twenty people participated in the speak out. For the most part the listeners were polite and patient, and everyone who wanted to speak had their chance.
There’s going to be a lot of discussion in the next few weeks about the protests in Providence held in the wake of the verdict of the grand jury in Ferguson, MS. There will be discussions about systemic racism, police profiling, protesting tactics, flag burning, highway blocking and the rising tide of a politicized youth movement with an agenda quite different from that of the previous generations.
This is my take. I was there, this is what I heard and saw, but there were hundreds of perspectives at last night’s Ferguson Rally in Providence, so don’t think of mine as definitive. I’ll do more than one piece on this, but I think it makes sense to start near the end, with the protesters jumping over the fence and descending onto the highway, Route 95, where the protesters blocked southbound traffic for about twenty minutes.
The event was billed as an event to “Demand justice for all victims of anti-black violence, state terror and police impunity.” Many of the over 120 people present, especially people of color, had stories to tell of being stopped by the police and being treated as criminals because they “fit the description. The event was held under the watchful eye of the Providence Police, who hovered at the edge of the park. Ironically, just as Alex, one of the event organizers, took the microphone to address the crowd, the police swooped in on the other side of the fountain to arrest a homeless man for reasons unknown.
“I think it’s really important to understand that police violence, anti-blackness and white supremacy all plays out in our society in a variety of ways,” said Andrea, one of the organizers, “Some of this violence is actually physical violence that leads to death, that leads to imprisonment, etc., but some violence is not so physical. We can have emotional violence, we can have spiritual violence, and that’s constantly happening to us…”
Last night over 200 protesters (estimated by the 
