Trending Topics

Did This Powerful Speech from Activist Cat Brooks Spur the Resignation of San Francisco’s Police Chief?

A San Francisco activist and community organizer confronts the San Francisco Police Commission about police brutality after the shooting of Black resident Mario Woods last year.

This video from last year has become relevant once more after San Francisco top cop Greg Suhr resigned last week. The former police chief vacated his position after his officers shot an unarmed 27-year-old Black woman after a car chase. The mayor called for his resignation amid growing racial tensions between the Black community the police department.

Activist Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, said this in her passionate speech:

“After Mario was murdered, murdered, executed in broad daylight in your city, I asked myself, how long– I didn’t ask myself, I posted on Facebook, as a matter of fact. How long is it gonna take for the chief to come out and tell the community that we didn’t see what we thought we saw on that video? How long was it going to take for the police to come out and tell us that we didn’t understand the circumstances surrounding that murder?

Because that’s the tape. That’s what happens every time. We see what happens, and then you trot yourself out and tell us that we are not intelligent enough to understand that we saw a Black man gunned down execution style in broad daylight in the streets of San Francisco.

Somehow you think that talking to us like we are children who have not been examining, watching, studying you and your system for hundreds of years as we figure out how to tear it down, push back, and eventually win, as you continue to talk to us like children, what you are doing is inciting the rage of the people.”

Back to top