They prayed for justice, for elected officials, for police officers and firefighters, and for the youth of Syracuse.
View full sizeThe Lighthouse of Love Ministries organizes a march called "Justice for Injustice" to the Justice Center jail in Syracuse to protest conditions there and in memory of Chuniece Patterson, who died while in custody. The Rev. Percy Bivins, left. and his wife, Hazel Bivins, gather with other marchers at the Patterson home on Elk Street.The church family of Chuniece Patterson prayed and marched Saturday in front of the Justice Center, where Patterson died Nov. 12 of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.
About 40 people marched from the corner of Elk and State streets, near where Patterson lived, to the jail where she died, praying for justice, for elected officials, for police officers and firefighters, and for the youth of Syracuse.
“This is about changing the minds of youth so they don’t ever make it to these doors,” said Michelle Arrindell, a member of the Lighthouse of Love Ministries, 1909 South Ave., and an organizer of the march.
The Rev. Percy Bivins, pastor of the church, said the march was, in part, to “wake up Syracuse, to let them know something should be done ... Nobody should ever die in the Justice Center ...
“Bless the mayor, the police, the firefighters, the lawyers and all those in the political arena,” he prayed, while marchers chanted for justice “in Jesus’ name.”
Church members Chundra Smith and Carrie Patterson, the mother and grandmother of Chuniece Patterson, “are grieving real hard,” Bivins said.
Clutching her Bible, Smith cried and prayed while she paced in front of the Justice Center. She declined to comment.
Smith has filed a notice with Onondaga County that she intends to sue over the death of her 21-year-old daughter, who complained of abdominal pain in her cell for 14 hours before she died. She had been arrested Nov. 10 on a bench warrant after failing to show up in court on charges related to one of her five arrests in five months. She had been charged after allegedly breaking a glass counter and door at a convenience store, throwing a beer through a friend’s window and breaking another friend’s cell phone.
In June, the state Commission of Correction ruled that the jail nurse, Missy Clayton, treated Patterson with “gross negligence and incompetence.”
Bivins said the marchers Saturday were not only praying for those who have lost loved ones, but also for those in the city with the power to make changes.
“We’re asking also that churches step up to the plate and come together with all the churches,” Bivins said. “If that happened, we wouldn’t have these problems,” Bivins said.
The church plans a peace rally for youth in September, before the start of the school year, Arrindell said.
“We will be marching again,” she said.
Related links:
» Who is Chuniece Patterson? She is the pregnant inmate who died after hours of agony at the Justice Center jail in Syracuse.
» The state slams a nurse and deputy for Patterson's death. The state corrections commissioner ruled the nurse acted in “gross negligence and incompetence."