All-day protest planned in Riverhead Saturday

A Riverhead couple is organizing a protest against police brutality in the United States, to take place Saturday at the Route 58 traffic circle.

Margarita Jimenez Ferebee and Tiara Ferebee are calling for a peaceful protest from noon to 8 p.m. Saturday.

“Everybody should do their part,” Jimenez Ferebee said. “As the mom of three biracial kids, it’s important for me to work towards justice for all. It’s important for all of us to feel equal in the world we live in,” she said.

They plan to observe eight minutes and 46 seconds of silence in memory of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for that length of time while arresting him on May 25. Video of the incident, showing the officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck as the prone Floyd cried out that he couldn’t breathe and eventually lost consciousness, sent shock waves and spawned massive protests across the U.S. and around the world.

The officers involved in Floyd’s arrest were all fired by the police department and criminally charged, though it took intervention by the Minnesota state attorney general to upgrade charges against the ex-cop who kneeled on Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, and to bring charges against the other three officers who assisted Chauvin. Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane were each charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder while committing a felony, and with aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter with culpable negligence.

Since protests swept the country, reforms have been proposed in Congress and in various state legislatures. The New York State Legislature on Monday passed legislation banning on chokeholds, and race-based profiling, as well as a measure requiring police departments and courts to track arrests by race and ethnicity to help identify bias patterns in arrests, prosecutions and outcomes.

“I think we’re very close to seeing change,” Jimenez Ferebee said. “And we can’t give up now.”

She said a Riverhead police sergeant reached out to her after a flyer about the protest began circulating on social media.

“He called me with open arms,” she said. “He was being supportive.”

Police are concerned about the flow of traffic on Route 58 and, in particular, the potential for obstructing ambulances on their way to the Peconic Bay Medical Center ER, Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller said.

“I’ve been on a stretcher in an ambulance and I’d never want to do anything to impede an ambulance in an emergency,” said Jimenez Ferebee, 31. She was critically injured in a crash involving a drunk driver in 2015. She has been holding a demonstration against drunk driving at the traffic circle annually since 2016, to raise awareness of the issue.

While she acknowledges the length of the planned protest is extraordinary, Jimenez Ferebee encouraged residents to spend whatever time they can to join them to show support.

“You’re not born racist. It’s something you’re taught,” she said. “In kindergarten, we thought of each other as brothers and sisters — and then they taught us to hate each other,” she said. That’s what needs to be reversed, she said.

“We don’t want our children to be dealing with this in 10 years,” Tiara Ferebee said.