Police Address Community After Protests

Today the top law enforcement officers in Huntsville, Madison, and Madison County addressed the public after a chaotic scene Wednesday following hours of peaceful protesting.

N-double-a-c-p.

Thanks for joining us tonight - i'm najahe sherman, and i'm dan shaffer.

Today the top law enforcement officers in huntsville, madison, and madison county addressed the public after a chaotic scene last night following hours of peaceful protesting.

Here's what they had to say during the nearly 40-minute briefing - touching on race relations, arrests, and what they're doing to keep officers and protesters safe.

Kevin turner "let me tell you this about mr. burnet and the naacp.

It was not his group.

It was not his group.

You could tell it was a fine line between the people in the park and the people who came up on that square.

After that permit was over with we had the right to disband it.

We allowed them another 90 minutes.

Ok?

Somewhere around 90 minutes.

Once we give that order.

We wanted to give that order before it became dark because we knew what they had in place.

We knew what they were trying to do.

In terms of putting objects out there.

To hurt our town.

To hurt our downtown area.

To hurt all of her buildings and restaurants and business owners.

Mark mcmurray, "we started out all of our officers in the courthouse you didn't see any of them.

And then all of a sudden we brought them out and they still didn't change their mind.

We brought the troopers out it still didn't change their mind.

How many warnings do you give before you lose your sunset?"

Turner, "they feed off the people that get closer.

The want to get closer.

And i'm telling you i'm not letting them take our courthouse."

We thought maybe there would be a small group of 100 hundred or so like we saw monday.

And there wasn't.

I saw about 4 or 5 times that number of what we had monday."

We were trying to negotiate with them.

Look guys it's time to go we are going to do this another day.

And then they make us do our job.

None of us wanted to go out there and do our job.

Like we did last night.

But we have to do our job and we have to effect law enforcement.

The naacp demonstrators went home.

And you have the video footage of what was left.

We're not going to tolerate unlawful behavior after sunset.

In downtown huntsville.

You are not going to burn our huntsville down."

Now we want to bring waay 31's sydney martin in.

She was at that briefing this morning - and was in downtown last night as the situation escalated.

Sydney - based on what you saw last night, did anything out of the news conference today surprise you?

Dan - it's now been 24 hours since the protest started in downtown huntsville - we know you were exposed to tear gas, how long did you feel those effects?