Downtown anti-police violence protest

Demonstrators gathered outside the Ronstadt Transit Center in downtown Tucson on Saturday evening at 6:30 p.m. to protest police violence in support of similar protests in Chicago and Minneapolis. 

The group shouted “How do you spell racist? Tucson PD!” and “ACAB! All cops are bastards!” as it marched west on Congress Street around 7:20 p.m. Protesters held signs that read “The system isn’t broken, it was built this way – abolition not reform.” The majority was clad in black and wore masks, but a few left their faces uncovered. The demonstrators dispersed around 7:50 p.m. after returning to the Ronstadt Transit Center.

Tucson Students for a Democratic Society initially organized the event, but later pulled its support after some participants distributed fliers advocating tactics the group disagreed with, according to the Facebook event page.

Dan Hapgood, a self-proclaimed anarchist who participated in the demonstration, said the protest aimed to target an issue larger than just the Tucson Police Department. 

“The main point of this is that it’s not the individual police officers that are the problem,” he said. “The system is the problem.”

No one was arrested during the march, according to Heidi Reynolds-Stenson, a legal observer with the southern Arizona chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.