When Nikko Lester was released from the NYPD’s Central Booking station, he was so discombobulated he could not be sure what time of day it was. His face was bloodied, his nose bent out of shape. The 33-year-old from downtown Brooklyn did not know whether he sustained the injury from the police baton that had struck him during his arrest, the knee that then pinned him to the ground, or from the seizure that followed. The musician says he had been out peacefully protesting with friends the night before – his first ever march – when he was rushed by four officers, pushed to the pavement and handcuffed. “I kept saying over and over again, ‘I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything.’ There had been no provocation,” he told the Telegraph. “They weren’t in any mood to listen.” And just like that, another black man in America became a statistic.
