Downtown Atlanta protest remains peaceful, on message

ATLANTA - A crowd of several hundred protesters took to the streets of Atlanta on Friday evening to bring attention to the police shooting deaths of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte and Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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The group gathered at the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Downtown Atlanta around 7 p.m. before heading south on Centennial Olympic Park Drive. The large crowd then turned onto Luckie Street which runs into Auburn Avenue. Along the way, the crowd stopped at each intersection symbolically “taking” it. 

The group eventually made its way to the steps of the King Center where Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, spoke to the crowd.

“We're here tonight to stand in solidarity with Tulsa and Charlotte. And stand in solidarity to those who've lost their lives right here in Georgia. That black lives do matter. I believe - that black lives matter,” Georgia NAACP Francys Johnson said.

The crowd then headed to the Atlanta City Detention Center where they held a sit-in on the steps.

Organizers of the protest, including the Georgia NAACP, called this a day of action and called the march "Midnight in America: Not One More." They called for reflection and response between police and community members.

The night’s events were generally peaceful, but law enforcement was still on hand to make sure nothing got out of order. There were a few brief skirmishes, but those were quickly policed by protest leaders.

The Atlanta Police Department said it had prepared in advance of the march in case the demonstrations got out of hand, but police said they had reason to be optimistic about the night. Police said the protests were well-organized with a deeply peaceful overtone. Police also said they learned many lessons from an earlier round of protests in July in the city.

The police department did not elaborate on efforts to maintain safety and order, but said officers monitored the entire evening from an operations center at Atlanta Police headquarters using more than 7,000 cameras.

FOX 5 reporters were among the protesters. Here are some of the things they saw along the way: