Earlier today I made public my raw footage taken the day of the police brutality protest outside of Manchester PD on June 4, 2011. The video begins around 4:20 in the afternoon with myself offering chalk to the small crowd gathering across the street before I take an exploratory walk into the police station. I spend the next few minutes inside, talking with civilians at the police department and watching out of the window as the protest swells. The chalking gets well underway while I am still inside, and police approach the crowd, but do not intervene. Time passes, some chalking spreads to the walls of the building, and the police reappear, this time ready to write tickets under the city’s vague graffiti ordinance. Moments after two chalkers are approached, they are arrested upon not immediately presenting identification. Once they are dragged inside, an order is given to start taking cameras from those present outside. Keeping my distance, I try to get as close as possible to get footage of the camera grabbing without becoming victimized myself. Shortly thereafter, two more arrests happen inside while my camera runs on the action outside. The last few moments of my video portray a more relaxed scene, as some of us present converse with officers stationed outside about everything from the events of the day to the morality of modern policing. After the sole battery I owned at the time exhausted, the final four arrests, including my own, would occur.
For the public record, here’s fifty-three minutes of unedited footage from the scene of the Chalking 8 incident.
