By Avi Rana

A group of hundreds of people rallied outside Passaic City Hall just before Thanksgiving Holiday. They demanded tougher discipline for a city police officer who was accused of making racist comments. These comments were recorded and went out on a Facebook video.

Passaic resident Jasmine Vidal and her boyfriend said they were sitting on their front porch with a friend when the officer drove up in a patrol car. Vidal said they told the officer to get out of the car when he started speaking to them. Being told to get out of the car made the officer angry, using foul language and making threats about calling immigration.

Even though there were protests, Mayor Alex Blanco said that the community should remain calm while the internal affairs division of the police department conducts an investigation. The officer has been disciplined, and pending an investigation, will either be cleared of serious charges or punished.

Not related directly to this incident, there had been a some protests related to racial inequity around Passaic County since the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Most of them were in Paterson and Wayne Townships. In Paterson, the death of Jameek Lowery was a local example of the need to combat police violence.

Many in the Black Lives Matter movement are fighting for systemic changes in policing. Lowery, a Paterson man, died in 2019 after he live streamed an encounter with police in which he asked for water, and for officers not to shoot him. Due to the altercation he died at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center a couple days later.

Many students, staying in contact by phone during the pandemic, are concerned about police violence, and racial inequality. It seems like everyone has a story that can be related to their race, and my friends think that people should be judged by who they are, rather than what they look like. Together we can all learn from each other and grow.