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Holding umbrellas and paper signs drooping in the rain, 80 Utahns, including families of young people slain by police officers, rallied Saturday in Salt Lake City to express solidarity with Baltimore.
"Hey hey! Ho ho! These killer cops have got to go!" they chanted. "Black lives matter! Black lives matter!"
On their signs were printed such messages as: "Too much power causes excessive force" and "No justice, no peace."
Baltimore has seen unrest this month after Freddie Gray, a black man, died after his neck was broken while in police custody. Six officers were charged in his death, and the Department of Justice on Friday began a civil rights probe into the Baltimore Police Department's practices.
Cindy Moss, the aunt of Darrien Hunt, said the most galling thing for his family is knowing the evidence of what happened the day he was killed by Utah police officers will never be presented in a court of law.
Hunt, 22, was shot in the back six times by Saratoga Springs officers last September. The officers said Hunt, who was black, swung a sword at them, a fact his family disputes. The Utah County Attorney ruled the officers' actions justified.
Each time a police officer kills a person, "It makes us sick," Moss said. "How many of our people have to die?"
She — and many of the dozen or so speakers — urged against complacency, telling rallygoers to get informed about the facts in each case of police brutality or killing.
"Fight with us. Go to rallies. Sign petitions!" Moss urged, echoing an earlier speaker who warned against "un-friending" those who disagree on social media.
"Keep it positive so they'll see this is real," said Moss.
Gina Thayne, who was raising Dillon Taylor and his siblings after his parents died, also spoke at the rally.
The 20-year-old Taylor, who was white, was shot and killed by a Salt Lake City police officer outside a 7-Eleven last August. The officer who shot him was justified, the Salt Lake County District Attorney ruled, because he thought Taylor was about to pull a gun from his pants. Taylor was unarmed.
"There needs to be accountability," Thayne said. "It's not just about color and Dillon anymore. It's about people having their rights violated."
Lex Scott, one of the speakers, said organizers had hoped for a crowd of 1,000, but the rain likely discouraged some from attending the rally on the sidewalk in front of the Wallace Bennett Federal Building on State Street. Cars honked as they passed, showing support.
Scott acknowledged that the majority of those at the rally were white, but said many who are black "have given up on the justice system. They have given up on police departments."
Those suspected of crime deserve due process, not to die at the hands of police officers, she said. "We deserve our day in court. We deserve a trial!"
Fubuki Abe told the crowd that transgender black women suffer disproportionately at the hands of police, naming two recent cases in the Baltimore area. One transgender woman died outside the National Security Agency headquarters; another was mistreated when swept up in the arrests following protests of Gray's murder in Baltimore, she said.
Two-thirds of the anti-LGBT murders in 2013 were black transgender women, she said, citing a National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs statistic.
"We should all be outraged," said Abe. "When we say black lives matter, make sure we're talking about all black lives."
Twitter: @KristenMoulton