and phillip pannell,i understand, was part of that. batron: the violators, it was just a name. you know, we wasn t a gang from the bronx, you know, what i m saying, or from staten island. we were just a bunch offriends that protected eachother. we had town rivals hackensack, englewood, you know,and they re like, we ll get into these fights andthen a cop comes break it up. but we wasn t a gang. we were just trying todefend ourselves, you know? we were alwaysoutnumbered. al: the demonizing of phillippannell, casting him as a thug. it had nothing todo with the shooting. that was not known tothe officer when he shot him. he didn t know whether hewas a choirboy or convict. mike: another thing youneed to understand about what happened in teaneck in april 1990 whenphillip was shot, was you got to turnback the clock a year to the centralpark jogger case. now, we all knowthat the central park jogger case was atravesty of justice.
that accentuated somethingthat happened in teaneck, that was an anomaly. it was the perfectstorm, so to speak. r: more than 250 people marchedthrough downtown teaneck today protesting the shootingof a black teen. reverend al sharptonled today s rally focusing attentionon the investigation. many blacks and whites ofteaneck said al sharpton s presence would nothelp this situation. alison: i can just saythat there were some people who were absolutelyglad he was here, and there were somepeople that wished he would go away and sawhim to be an opportunist. w1: demagogs do notcare about teaneck. they only care about themselves. (vo) with verizon, you can now get a private 5g network. so you can do more than connect your business, you can make it even smarter. now ports can know where every piece of cargo is. and where it s going. (dock worker) right on time. (vo) robots can predict breakdowns and order their own replacement parts. (foreman) nice work. (vo) and retailers can get ahead of the f
his role in thatparticular story. so by the time hegets to teaneck, his reputation wasextremely controversial. r: some residents todaywere fearful of still moreviolence, skeptical of themarches organizer brooklyn minister, al sharpton. jackie: i didn t havea good feeling about al sharpton s desireto be in teaneck. i may feel differentlyabout him now, but i didn t feelhe had credibility. and i felt there senough diversity, enough divergence ofopinion among teaneck people to cometogether and come to some consensus ofhow to move forward. m1: there are clearlypeople who are attempting to use a situationfor their own political benefit. then that s not helpful,that s destructive. (protestors chanting) mike: for theentire summer during this grand jury investigation, on the streets of teaneck, every saturday therewas a march led
by followers ofreverend al sharpton, often led by reverendsharpton himself. (upbeat gospel music) (protestors shoutingthrough megaphone) al: the big mistake people make is to have one rally,one march and go. you got to keep going. you got to keeppublic attention. you have to keep people focused. a lot of the attacks ihad then and now is that sharpton just wants publicity. that s exactly what i want. you only showingyour racism, to ask what am idoing in teaneck? what was king doingin selma? he was there becauseinjustice was there. unless you can keeppublic attention, you ll never make change. mike: well, after reverendsharpton came to town, some of the politicalestablishment in teaneck was looking for anantidote, so to speak.
this is the result ofdecades of believing your ownhype and not wanting to confront theugliness that was always there. but you chose tolook the other way. jackie: it was soearth shattering. i believed, for the mostpart that everybody was living happily together in teaneck. but it wasn t the utopia that ithought it was, for many people. (protestors chanting) (broken glass shattering) r: boarded up businessesand broken glass, smashed by hundredsof young people, angry over the police killing of phillip pannellon tuesday night. natacha: i was like,what does this have to do with my brother sdeath, you know? and i was kind ofupset in a sense, because that s not how he was. you know, that like all ofthis happened to my brother. and then on top of that,all this violence and stuff.