Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez reacts to Tuesday's protests
DURHAM (WTVD) -- Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez is crediting the professionalism of his officers Tuesday night for staving off any major chaos amid the protests over the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri.
While many of the protesters in Durham came to peacefully voice their outrage, others seemed to have different intentions, and not everyone was on board.
Monica Watson came to the protest armed with the sign she drew up to honor her son.
Marques Hambric, 25, was shot and killed in May in an altercation with Winston-Salem Police.
"Everywhere they have a protest; I'm going with this sign. I'm taking my son's sign" Watson said.
ABC11 cameras captured Monica on Tuesday, sign in hand, marching alongside the throngs of protesters demonstrating against the grand jury's decision in Ferguson to not to charge the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.
Watson sees the shooting as eerily similar to the one that took her son's life. That's why she chose to protest.
"To let everybody know that it's happening all over and, in some cases, it's not getting heard at all," said Watson.
However, Watson got more than she bargained for after joining in on the march. Some in the group let off smoke bombs and blocked intersections downtown.
The action even spilled onto the Durham Freeway. Drivers were stopped in their tracks as protesters briefly refused to move.
"Yeah I saw that. I wasn't doing that," said Watson. "I'm not going that route because I don't think my son gets peace when I do something violent."
Durham police officers seemed to give protesters room to exercise their first amendment rights, drawing upon the lessons learned from protest chaos in the past.
"Between past [protest] experience and watching everyone else's experiences, we moved forward with lessons learned," Chief Lopez told ABC11 by phone.
Lessons learned included overlooking some law breaking. "Burn the prisons" was scrawled on the Durham County Jail by protesters. It was scrubbed off by Wednesday afternoon. At least a dozen windows were broken by protesters at the Durham Armory. There were no arrests.
For Watson, some of the protest tactics went too far.
"We're not getting peace like that. All we're getting is tearing things up," she said, "and as taxpayers we get to pay for that".
One protest organizer, ABC11 spoke to by phone, defended some of the wilder scenes in Durham as examples of civil disobedience that raises awareness about the disconnect between the public and police.
