New details about protest on Central Avenue

We’re learning more details about what sparked last night’s protest on Central Avenue. The protest happened on the same day as the officer involved shooting on Franklin Street, Monday, June 20th, but was not specific to the shooting.

Monday night, protestors stood at the intersection of Henry Johnson Blvd and Central Avenue blocking traffic and squaring off with the police.

Some of the same people who were on Franklin St earlier trying to make sense of the officer involved shooting were at the protest.
Charles whitaker says he can’t speak on the situation that happened on Franklin St on Monday, but he says for the past two years he’s thrown a Juneteenth party on this block and he’s never had issues.

He says that changed on Sunday. "For some reason there’s a complaint they started messing with us mess with the double park cars sitting around just making us feel uncomfortable it was no issues everybody were enjoying themselves," he said.

The spokesperson for Albany Police, Steve Smith says police were on the scene because of the complaints they received of loud music and double parking. Once on the scene police say people were using fireworks and that’s illegal. "Police personnel on the scene had conversations with individuals involved in the situation and asked them to no longer fire fireworks especially in the middle of the street in a densely populated neighborhood," said Smith.

Charles says the level of force used to get their point across was excessive. He says his son was slammed on the ground by police and he recently filed a complaint about the incident.