A group of fewer than 40 people gathered on the Naugatuck Town Green Tuesday night in a demonstration of support for police. The event was organized by Thomaston businessman David LaManna, who also arranged a rally in Torrington last Saturday that drew a larger crowd.
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“We planned this to be a little bit smaller of a rally than others we’ve done,” LaManna said Tuesday.
The demonstration confronted the issues raised by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota in late May, but in a different way from the widespread Black Lives Matter protests.
LaManna’s United American Patriots group supports police, but it doesn’t condone the actions of Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed Floyd.
LaManna called the outrage that followed Floyd’s death “justified.”
“But let’s make no mistake about that incident,” he told the crowd. “The repulsive behavior of Derek Chauvin was an aberration, an abnormality, an act of a rogue individual. Chauvin’s behavior is not standard practice for the 700,000 law enforcement officers in our country.”
In his speech, LaManna objected to the way protests have responded to what he called an isolated incident.
“Because of the bad judgment of one person, just one single police officer, our country is experiencing unprecedented police backlash,” he said.
Another speaker, the Rev. Ernestine Holloway, rejected calls to defund the police. Holloway pastors Serenity House Ministries in Meriden and is running for state representative as a Republican in the 82nd District.
As she recalled the names of police officers she knew growing up, Holloway emphasized that community policing is the way to avoid future incidents of police violence.
“Each community has its own language, its uniqueness. So if we sit to the table and we conversate about our differences and how things should be handled, that’s the better way. Not defunding,” she said.
Holloway was one of just a handful of people of color in a mostly white crowd.
“So if you want to talk to me, that’s fine. If you want to talk to me about defunding the police, ain’t gonna happen. ’Cause, I don’t even think that’s worth a conversation,” she told the crowd.
Holloway said she does not support Black Lives Matter.
She encouraged attendees to get politically active and back candidates who support the police. Holloway went after state Democrats who want to defund the police and criticized Gov. Ned Lamont.
“If you’ve got a leader who can’t support your police, you got a problem. He gotta go. And it was a problem when he put a Black Lives Matter flag on the Capitol.”
State Sen. George Logan of Ansonia arrived at the Naugatuck Green just as the rally, which lasted under an hour, was wrapping up.
He’ll be among the lawmakers voting this week on a new police accountability bill as the legislature meets in special session.
Logan said he takes issue with the qualified immunity provision, which would remove protections from lawsuits for officers.
“[It] will have a very detrimental effect to policing in Connecticut,” he told Connecticut Public Radio. “And I believe it will actually hurt most the people that the supporters of the bill, the creators of the bill, are trying to help.”
LaManna and Mark Dorias are co-founders of the Facebook group United American Patriots. The group page shows plans for similar rallies across the state in the coming weeks.
LaManna said the Facebook group garnered 3,600 followers in two weeks, and he plugged future rallies, including one in Hartford on Aug. 2 called the CT Freedom Rally, which is pushing for no mask mandate and the reopening of all Connecticut businesses.
Ali Oshinskie is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms.
