RALEIGH, N.C. — Pepper spray and handcuffs won't end his quest to lead voters to the polls in Alamance County, the Rev. Greg Drumwright said during a news conference Sunday.
He announced a march in Graham on Election Day.
"We're coming even stronger," Drumwright said, standing in the parking lot at the Tucker Street Apartments in Burlington, his childhood neighborhood. His release from jail the day before, following a get-out-the-vote march that never made it to the polling place, was conditioned on staying out of Graham for 72 hours.
On Saturday, Drumwright, a pastor in Greensboro, led about 200 people from Wayman Chapel AME Church in Graham to the town's Court Square, the site of frequent demonstrations this summer calling for justice, an end to racism and the removal of the Confederate monument that stands in front of the courthouse.
In front of the monument, Drumwright asked the crowd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence in memory of George Floyd, who died earlier this summer as a Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck for the same time period, setting off a wave of nationwide protests against police brutality. Four members of Floyd's family participated in Saturday's procession.
The rally that followed also ended with pepper spray. Alamance County sheriff's deputies began dismantling the group's audio equipment and used the spray when demonstrators intervened. More than a dozen people, including Drumwright, were arrested.
The pepper fog caused several children who attended the march to throw up. Janet Johnson, a 56-year-old minister from Graham who attended the rally in a motorized scooter, had a panic attack and began to convulse.
Johnson was thinking: "Am I going to die?" she told The News & Observer in an interview Sunday. She has asthma, as well as several other medical conditions.
Johnson was positioned near the sound equipment and said that when deputies tried to unplug a generator, demonstrators said not to touch the equipment, that they would unplug it.
That's when she saw a deputy raise a can of the pepper fogger toward her. He was about 10 feet away. Johnson said she tried to back up, but couldn't. "He just started spraying," she said.
People in the crowd carried Johnson to a nearby business and gave her medical attention. She said she didn't trust the city paramedics and declined their help.
A day later, Johnson said, she feels sore and has a tightness in her chest.
At a news conference on Sunday, Lt. Daniel Sisk said that Graham Police Department regretted that the pepper fog had affected children.
"We didn't want any children to get hurt," he said. "We didn't want anybody to get hurt. And the fact that the child was exposed to the pepper fog is unfortunate. But we were very clear on what we were trying to get people to do. We were trying to get people clear from the street."
Sisk blamed Drumwright for insufficient communication to make the event safe. He said Drumwright declined to do a walk through with police and rejected several plans that the city proposed.
"He requested road closures at Court Square and North Main, which due to the proximity to the voting polls, we were not wanting to authorize because it would limit access to the voting polls," Sisk said.
Though demonstrators were not permitted to block the road during the rally, police had agreed in advance to let the crowd pause for a moment of silence in front of the monument, Sisk said.
"We allowed them to pause for eight minutes and 40 some seconds, and after about nine minutes, told them they needed to clear the road," he said. "Once it was clear that they had no intention to clear the road, we sprayed a couple sprays on the ground."
Sisk said that by waiting nine minutes for demonstrators to clear the road, police gave demonstrators "over the time that we agreed to."
He denied that Graham officers pepper sprayed anyone in the face or body. Video footage taken by News & Observer journalists clearly shows at least one protester being sprayed in the face. It's unclear from the video whether the officer who deployed the spray was a sheriff's deputy or a Graham officer.
The department later released a detailed timeline of events and said it planned to release an after-action report.
Chief Kristy Cole, who was named to the position Oct. 15, did not attend the news conference. Sisk said she was not available for an interview.
The Alamance County Sheriff's Office has not responded to multiple requests for information since Saturday afternoon.
The events in Graham made national headlines Saturday, and politicians began posting their reactions to Twitter.
Initially, Attorney General Josh Stein said it seemed early voting was not impacted. But on Sunday, he tweeted that he had received reports that people had been obstructed from voting.
"This is extremely concerning, and we need to get to the bottom of it," Stein tweeted. He asked anyone who was kept from voting or felt intimidated to notify the State Board of Elections.
Stein has spoken with both Drumwright and Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson since Saturday, Laura Brewer, a spokeswoman for Stein, said.
After learning about the events in Graham, Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for vice president, told reporters on Sunday: "Listen, I think it is very important that everyone be able to vote without any hindrance, without any intimidation, without any obstacles. Again, there is too much at stake and we want to preserve everyone's right to be able to be heard through their vote this election."
Legal organizations that filed suit against Graham and Alamance County earlier this year to challenge restrictions on protests in Court Square also weighed in on Saturday's events.
"Police violence against peaceful protesters is unacceptable," Chantal Stevens, executive director for the ACLU of North Carolina, said in a news release. "It is hard to see the police's actions as anything other than an act of voter intimidation."
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said, "The assault on peaceful demonstrators in Graham, North Carolina shocks the conscience and is an astounding display of police violence perpetrated against Black people and other supporters in the final days of the general election."
A lawsuit filed against Graham on behalf of the Alamance NAACP and eight individual people was settled last month. Litigation against Alamance County and the Sheriff's Office continues.
