Flashback: Detroit Police Cruiser Plows Through Crowd of Violent Rioters!

From the Detroit Free Press:

Police dashboard camera footage clearly shows Jae Bass sitting on the hood of a police SUV and shouting to a crowd from a microphone seconds before an officer gunned the vehicle forward.

Perhaps not as easily visible is why Bass, 24, of Detroit says he was really up there — how his legs were buckling under the vehicle’s slow forward motion.

“My leg was going to go under the car,” he said. “So I chose either under the car or on top of the car.”

Seconds later he was on the hood as the officer behind the wheel accelerated to about 25 mph, per police, in an incident that made national headlines.

For the first time in nearly a month of marches in Detroit against police brutality, protests had turned violent again. The marches come following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white officer knelt on his neck for nearly 9 minutes in May in Minneapolis.

In the week since the police SUV incident, police and protesters have pointed fingers at each other and told differing accounts of what happened about 9:30 p.m. June 28 on Vernor Highway west of Waterman Street in southwest Detroit. Several protesters reported walking away with injuries from that night.

Here's more from the Detriot News:

What started as a peaceful demonstration against police brutality in Detroit took a troubling turn late Sunday when a throng of marchers surrounded a police vehicle and some protesters jumped on the SUV as it pushed through the crowd.

The incident was sparked when an officer, who was escorting the protesters, moved his vehicle into the crowd. Some of the marchers tried to block the SUV, and others, whom police referred to as "agitators," jumped onto the hood and roof as the march moved toward West Vernor near Dix, heading toward Clark Park, at about 9:30 p.m.

Dozens of protesters surrounded the vehicle and a rear back window was "busted out," police said.

"The officer tried to escape," according to the department.

Protesters were still on the hood as the SUV accelerated. They slid from the vehicle and tumbled onto the ground.

The chaotic scene showed other marchers scrambling; some could be heard screaming and others ran after the SUV.

"I got hit by a damn cop car today for walking," Brendan Scorpio said in a tweet late Sunday.

Demonstrators began marching at Patton Park at about 4 p.m. Sunday, following weeks of daily protests sparked by the death May 25 of George Floyd after a Minneapolis officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.

Stephan Perez, 16, who has spearheaded some of the Detroit walks, was at the march earlier Sunday and called it a "beautiful sight" with so many groups attending marching together, including those for immigrant rights and those calling for changing police department use of force policies.

“This time, we talked a lot, obviously, about the deaths of all these people. But, at the same time, since it was kind of like our home, or our territory, we spoke a little bit more about (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and stuff like that. We kept thinking about the movement that we’re fighting towards.

“... It was a beautiful sight to see.”