Sierra Smith, 27, lives in the Canfield apartment complex not far from where Brown was shot and where many of the worst clashes with police have occurred. Speaking into a microphone, she described how at night the police had blocked the streets to the apartment complex, making it almost impossible for residents to get in or out.
A neighbor had a baby three weeks ago, Smith said, and had run out of formula and diapers for her newborn. The police blocked them from going out for more.
“We get up to the top of the street and they tell us to turn around,” Smith said. “ ‘Go back where you came from.’ ”
“If you go out, you better be wearing the armor of God,” Smith said.
Others expressed disgust for white out-of-towners who were seen lighting trash bins on fire and carrying around Molotov cocktails. The Sunday looting and vandalism that shut down neighborhood stores was also stopping residents from doing needed errands.
Traci Blackmon, one of the organizers of the meeting, said, “I got calls that people don't have toiletries. People don't have food.”
Tremaine Combs, 32, said fear had infected his 5-year-old son in recent days.
As they were leaving a nearby Walgreens on Wednesday evening, he said, his son spotted a police officer driving by. “He was so terrified that he started crying,” Combs said.
Combs said he came to Thursday's meeting because he didn't want his son to grow up feeling like that.
What can we do to ensure these families are not going to starve as police lock them in their homes?