Charges were dropped Thursday against four members of the group Concerned Citizens for Justice stemming from their October arrests near the Chattanooga Choo Choo.
The four were arrested during a demonstration at Market and Main streets on Oct. 22 during a national day of protest against police brutality. Chattanooga police said the group entered the intersection and blocked traffic.
Ash-Lee Henderson, 29; Madison Dillard, 20; Janelle Jackson, 34; and Michael Heath, 22, were charged with inciting to riot and obstructing a highway. Jackson also was charged with resisting arrest, records show.
Sessions Judge David Bales dropped charges after prosecutors and the defendants agreed that they not plead guilty but perform community service and pay court costs and fines.
Henderson, who was the only one to appear before Bales, afterward stood up for the group’s stance.
“We still stand behind the principles for which we were arrested for civil disobedience in the first place,” she said.
“What we’ve seen and heard since is that the need has increased for us to be talking about black lives matter and for us to be doing work to talk about the mass incarceration and the overcriminalization of black communities,” Henderson said.
“We are solidly behind the idea that if you invest in more police it doesn’t mean a decrease in crime, it doesn’t mean safer communities; what it means is more arrestees,” she said. “But if we invest in black communities and youth development programs and jobs and education, we get the fruit of that labor.”
Mark Gilliland, a CCJ organizer, said group members felt the charges really stemmed from the nature of the protest, “particularly the inciting to riot charge.”
In 2013, the CCJ organized after the release of a June 14, 2012, video of two Chattanooga police officers beating a federal inmate who brandished a knife and kicked the door of an office at the Salvation Army on McCallie Avenue.
Video footage showed the beating with batons and shots of pepper spray at the hands of officers Sean Emmer and Adam Cooley. They left federal inmate Adam Tatum with a broken nose, black with and multiple breaks in both legs.
Both officers were fired, but a grand jury declined to indict them and they eventually reached a settlement with the city, as did Tatum.
News report from the arrests: