‘Key West is different.’ Hundreds march for Floyd, and sheriff calls death ‘despicable’
Several hundred people in Key West peacefully and somberly marched through the island’s downtown in memory of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who died in police custody on May 25.
“Say his name!” masked people shouted Monday evening as they made their way down Duval Street holding signs that read, “Black lives matter,” and “I can’t breathe.”
At a rally prior to the march held at Nelson English Park in Bahama Village, Key West Mayor Teri Johnston denounced the police officers involved in the fatal incident and said the Southernmost City is different from other cities, with different morals and values.
“Let’s show the world what a community looks like and how a community acts and how we take care of each other,” Johnston said.
The crowd, with most people wearing face masks, listened attentively to city and county officials, including Key West Police Chief Sean Brandenburg and Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay, who drew cheers from the largely quiet crowd when he addressed the Minneapolis officers involved in the Floyd incident.
“It was despicable, it was horrendous,” Ramsay said of the video that captured a police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.
“The first thing I said is that person needs to go to jail,” Ramsay said. “The other three need to go to jail. Their day’s coming. And they will go to jail and that will be just one more step toward justice for this travesty.”
Ramsay and Brandenburg walked in the march, along with Monroe County Mayor Heather Carruthers and Key West City Commissioners Jimmy Weekly, Greg Davila and Sam Kaufman.
“The violence, although I understand it, I never will condone it,” said City Commissioner Clayton Lopez, who helped organize the event. “It only tears down where we live, that which we’ve built, destroys who we are as a people and causes the loss of more lives, mostly our own.”
The crowd gathered at the park before walking through downtown, including down touristy Duval Street, with signs that read, “Black lives matter,” “I can’t breathe,” and other similar sentiments.
Brandenburg said Floyd’s death hurts the relationships between residents and police officers who have dedicated their lives to service.
“It means we must work harder to retain your trust,” Brandenburg said.
No arrests or incidents were reported during the march, said city spokeswoman Alyson Crean.
The Key West Police Department has dealt with controversy in recent years.
In 2016, a family whose son was left confined to a hospital bed since he fell to the ground in 2011 after being shocked by a Key West police officer’s Taser recevied a $850,000 settlement from the city to end a federal lawsuit.
A year earlier, the city paid a family $900,000 to end a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Charles Eimers, of Michigan.
Eimers, 61, died in police custody in 2013, six days after police officers held him face down on the beach on Thanksgiving after he fled a traffic stop and wouldn’t stop until he ran out of Duval Street at South Beach.
This story was originally published June 2, 2020 at 1:53 PM.
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