RICHMOND, Calif. – The police chief here – who is the former police chief in Fargo – participated in a demonstration in Richmond against police violence Tuesday, according to various media reports.
In a photo circulating on social media, Chris Magnus, head of the Fargo Police Department from 1999 to 2006, holds a sign that says “#Black Lives Matter.”
The phrase is a common one at recent protests of police violence around the country sparked by cases in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City where officers weren’t indicted for their involvement in incidents that killed unarmed young black men.
Magnus joined a protest Tuesday afternoon involving about 100 people in Richmond, a city of about 100,000 people in the San Francisco Bay area, according to a report by the Oakland Tribune.
“I spoke with my command staff, and we agreed it would be nice to convey our commitment to peaceful protest and that black and brown lives do matter,” the Tribune quoted Magnus as saying after the protest. “And to help bridge the gap that we understand sometimes exists between police and community around certain issues.”
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Magnus has gained acclaim for putting in place community-oriented policing practices in Richmond and was tapped by the U.S. Department of Justice to be part of a federal panel conducting a civil rights investigation of the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
