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Anti-police brutality protesters in San Jose brought their demands directly to the city’s top official Friday evening.

Hundreds gathered outside mayor Sam Liccardo’s home for a sit-in urging him to defund the San Jose Police Department and invest those funds in initiatives to assist communities of color.

They placed 17 crosses on the sidewalk outside Liccardo’s home, each with the name of someone killed in recent years by law enforcement in the South Bay.

Rosie Chavez showed up to honor her nephew Jacob Dominguez, who was shot and killed by police in September 2017. He was the suspect in a drive-by shooting and an armed robbery, but he was unarmed when police shot him, leaving behind his wife and three children. She said his youngest daughter asks Santa to bring back her father.

“He was making changes,” she said. “He was a loving person. He loved God.”

The group called upon Liccardo to listen to the families’ stories and go on the record about their demands. It was not clear whether he was home during the sit-in before protesters began marching to San Jose City Hall, more than a mile away, just after 7:30 p.m.

The group’s stipulations include creating funds specifically for black-led organizations, immediate and long term financial help for those injured by police, and fund first responders who will answer 911 calls with a focus on de-escalation and restorative justice.

Speakers also called upon school districts to remove police from their campuses, like Oakland Unified leaders voted to do this week. Some are pushing for the closure of the William F. James Boys Ranch, a juvenile detention facility in Morgan Hill.

Liccardo tweeted a video during the protest explaining why he does not believe defunding police is reasonable in San Jose. He defended the city’s spending on police, saying San Jose already has one of the smallest police forces among large U.S. cities, on a per capita basis.

This is just the latest protest in the Bay Area as the issue of police violence, particularly against black people, has bubbled over in the wake of the Memorial Day police killing of George Floyd, a black man.

Police reaction to these civil protests initially included more violence and tear gas, though broadly that has decreased in recent weeks.

One organizer, Jose Valle of Silicon Valley De-Bug, said he believes the South Bay’s police killings are similarly tragic to Floyd’s.

“We have 10 to 20 George Floyds (in San Jose) that were lost in the past decade or so. We need justice for these families. We need to look at the criminal justice system in a totally different way,” Valle said.

“I think there’s a different way of doing it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that crime is driven by poverty and inequality.”

Check back for updates.