5 protesters arrested in SLOPD tear gas incident now face misdemeanor charges
After San Luis Obispo police shot tear gas at Black Lives Matter protesters following a two-hour standoff in June, county prosecutors are charging five people with misdemeanor counts over the incident.
All five of the protesters arrested June 1 live in the city and are between the ages of 19 and 26 years old, according to complaints filed in San Luis Obispo Superior Court late Wednesday.
They are each scheduled to appear in court Thursday morning to hear the charges against them and enter a plea, based on court dates automatically assigned them the night of their arrest.
The District Attorney’s Office filed two separated cases Wednesday.
In the first case, the agency filed one misdemeanor count of resisting or obstructing an officer and another of failure to disperse against 26-year-old Gianna Stoddard.
In a second case, the agency charged as co-defendants Henry Popp, 19; and Abigail Landis, Michael Gates, and Alexandra Bahramzadehebrahimi, all 22 years old of San Luis Obispo.
The four are each facing a single misdemeanor count of failure to disperse.
Misdemeanor counts carry a maximum penalty of six months in County Jail and a $1,000 fine.
It is unclear if any of the defendants know they have been charged; none had attorneys listed for them in court records as of 5 p.m. Wednesday.
Each are scheduled to be arraigned in court at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.
The filings come the same day that the District Attorney’s Office filed a single misdemeanor reckless driving charge against San Luis Obispo resident David Medzyk, who drove a motorcycle into at least one protester as she was crossing Higuera Street during a small march on Sept. 2.
That protester was not injured. Medzyk’s social media pages showed numerous posts condemning the Black Lives Matter movement as well as white supremacist imagery.
What happened at the June 1 protest
On June 1, demonstrators took to downtown San Luis Obispo streets to protest the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. At one point in the afternoon, demonstrators marched onto Highway 101 and blocked traffic for about an hour before returning to city streets.
At about 8 p.m. that evening, after hundreds of protesters stood in a two-hour standoff with authorities near the police station, police in riot gear dispersed the crowd by firing rounds of tear gas and pepper bullets.
No injuries were reported, but jail logs that night showed seven protesters were arrested.
Police Chief Deanna Cantrell defended her officers’ tactics.
“I want you to know — and I feel like you do know this — that we support peaceful protest here in San Luis Obispo,” she said at the conference. “No police chief, no police officer ... wants what happened yesterday to happen.”
Cantrell’s last day with the city is Friday, after she accepted a job in Fairfield.
