15 Arrested in Weekly Protest of Officers’ Slaying of Woman

About 100 people peacefully conducted a third consecutive weekly demonstration Monday to protest the police shooting of Tyisha Miller, with 15 people arrested, including an 80-year-old grandmother dressed in a pink suit.

The misdemeanor arrests were made on the steps of the downtown police station, where rally organizers again resorted to civil disobedience--blocking access to a public building--to get the attention of state and federal authorities who are reviewing the shooting.

In a new twist, the marchers did not take their normal, three-block walk from the City Hall concourse to police headquarters but instead marched seven blocks through downtown Riverside, slightly disrupting traffic along busy Mission Inn Avenue.

Along the way, they chanted such slogans as “No justice, no peace, no murdering police!”

Miller, 19, was killed Dec. 28 by four Riverside police officers responding to a 911 call. They found her passed out in a locked car with a gun in her lap. The officers said they shot her when she moved for the weapon after they broke a window.

Monday’s demonstration began in front of a new statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which was erected Saturday outside City Hall and which became a rally focus. The statue was financed through a private community fund-raising drive that began several years ago.

“We don’t want a statue of Martin Luther King, we want the spirit of Martin Luther King,” said the Rev. Ron Gibson of Riverside, one of the organizers.

The Rev. Bernell Butler, one of Miller’s cousins, noted the work of the civil rights activist and said, “That disease of racism has not left. . . . It’s moved from Mississippi to Riverside.”

Among those arrested was Dorothy Levenson, 80, of San Bernardino, who told the crowd while holding a red-tipped white cane in one hand and a floral handbag in the other, “I don’t think it’s right to shoot a girl sleeping in her car. . . . I don’t care if I go to jail. It’s right to be here.”

Afterward, the Rev. Dewayne Butler, another of Miller’s cousins, said he had forgiven the officers who shot Miller. “I hold no animosity toward them. I feel greatly for them and their families. But there’s an element missing from them--confession.”