Police must be better — and more honest — in dealing with SLO protesters

What is going on with law enforcement in this county?

We have a sheriff who doesn’t think racism is a problem here.

The San Luis Obispo Police Department snatched a protest leader — a young, Black woman — off the streets and accused her of a collection of charges so broad and overblown you wonder if they drew them out of a hat.

And suddenly local law enforcement PR officers are churning out sketchy news releases that are thin on facts and heavy on transparent, one-sided agendas.

This is where we find ourselves after a week of renewed protests following Sheriff Ian Parkinson’s ill-advised comments to a room full of North County Tea Party members earlier this month.

The sheriff may have dug himself into a hole, but we didn’t expect other agencies — from SLOPD to the CHP — to come along with shovels of their own.

San Luis Obispo police, for their part, seemed chastened after their response to the first George Floyd protest went terribly awry when a skirmish line of officers in riot gear fired tear gas at protesters who refused to clear an intersection.

Indeed, many protests have occurred since then, with no similar results.

Then came Tuesday.

Led by 20-year-old activist Tianna Arata, a crowd of about 300 protesters gathered at Mitchell Park for a rally and march downtown.

Things were going OK until the marchers, for reasons that are not clear, left city streets and took their outcry to Highway 101, where they halted traffic and blocked cars for nearly an hour.

Let’s make this clear: Marching on the freeway is inherently dangerous — not to mention illegal.

Protesters have been injured and even killed in freeway marches, and no one wants that to happen here. We don’t condone it, but it’s a staple of civil rights marches.

“Block a highway, and you command a lot more attention than would a rally outside a church or city hall — from traffic helicopters, immobile commuters, alarmed officials,” the Washington Post wrote.

So while it’s not necessarily ideal, neither should it be unexpected.

SLO police, however, seemed entirely unprepared for that possibility, saying that Arata broke an agreement to stay off the highway and hold a peaceful event, which Tuesday’s march was for the most part.

But protests like this are inherently fluid.

Hopefully, they don’t turn violent. But they very likely will be unruly and unpredictable. Yet, for some reason, SLOPD was caught flat-footed and didn’t block access to the freeway.

Once on the highway, an entirely predictable altercation occurred between a driver and protesters.

They say he was cursing at them, revving his engine and brake-checking before surging ahead and apparently hitting a protester, who ended up on the hood of the car. In response, another protester smashed the car’s back window with a skateboard.

This account came from multiple eyewitnesses.

Yet somehow, the next day, the CHP posted on Facebook a half-baked news release with what clearly appears to be only one side of the story.

In that account, the CHP said, a group of demonstrators “became violent and circled a motorist who was attempting to drive around the protesters.”

“The motorist’s vehicle was attacked by the protesters. One suspect jumped on the hood of the victim’s vehicle and an additional suspect broke the rear window,” the release continues, before adding detail about the glass showering down on a 4-year-old boy.

“In fear for their safety, the driver was able to elude the combative protesters.”

That account is quite a stark difference from how Sam Grocott, the protester who was hit, characterized it.

“He just gunned it,” Grocott said said of the driver. “Next thing I know, I’m on the man’s hood, holding onto the back of his hood by his windshield wipers as he’s just flying down the street.”

Another protester, Cori Ramsey, corroborated Grocott’s account.

“Nobody touched his car, nobody had their hands on his car, we weren’t even speaking to him,” Ramsay said. “Then he just went for it and slammed his foot on the gas pedal.”

Fast forward to later in the protest — and another incident between a driver and protesters.

The second confrontation occurred at the corner of Chorro and Pacific streets downtown when a car again pushed into protesters, causing Arata to retaliate by swinging her flagpole at the vehicle.

This incident was documented by drone video from SLOPD, yet that didn’t stop the department from sending out a fine piece of fiction attempting to spin a different yarn around a sequence of events we can see with our own eyes.

In the video, several protesters can be seen crossing in front of a car stopped partway in the intersection.

Instead of waiting for the marchers to pass or even backing up, the motorist does the one thing you shouldn’t do in this case, which is drive forward into pedestrians, prompting Arata’s reaction.

Yet here’s what the release, laughably titled “SLOPD Seeking Identity of Vandalism Victim,” says: “The San Luis Obispo Police Department is seeking information on the identity of the driver of a grey vehicle that was struck by protest organizer Tianna Arata during the march on Tuesday evening, July 21st. Arata can been seen in the video holding a flagpole and striking the vehicle with it as the vehicle attempted to leave the area.”

What about the car driving into protesters? Is that just OK now?

When asked about the incident, SLO police Capt. Jeff Smith said the driver was fearful of the protesters’ “mob mentality.”

“I would disagree that the driver initiated this,” Smith said. “The video shows the crowd running toward the car and charging them and falsely imprisoning them. I would be in fear. He’s not accelerating at them. He’s trying to drive away from the crowd and get away the safest way he could. He’s trying to inch forward and they whack him and that’s when he accelerates.”

Please. No one is buying the line that protesters were “falsely imprisoning” this driver.

Who should be afraid in that situation, or in the one on the highway? The handful of young protesters or the person behind the wheel of the 2,000-pound vehicle?

To cast these drivers as victims is nothing less than rank gaslighting. In both cases, law enforcement agencies deviated from providing a dispassionate report and instead fabricated an account that reveals the apparent distaste they have for protesters.

Eventually, the evening came to a fitting, ignominious conclusion when four officers surprised Arata as she packed up after the protest.

The video of her yelling “I am not resisting” should stick with viewers as they watch police drag a Black woman across the street and push her into a patrol car. The moment was punctuated when another protester, identified as Elias Bautista, kicks an officer in the groin after being shoved to the ground, in the protesters’ lowlight moment of the night.

After arresting Arata, police took her to jail and then released a stunning list of charges against her: participation in a riot, unlawful assembly, conspiracy, unlawful imprisonment and resisting arrest, because apparently yelling you are not resisting is now enough to qualify you for that charge.

Also, what riot?

In the end, it’s just a terrible look for civil dissent in San Luis Obispo.

The lessons we take from it are these: If you want to protest, don’t do it unless you can follow the rules. If you don’t follow the rules, prepare to get the book thrown at you. This will make an example, so that others after you follow the rules.

Kind of defeats the purpose of a protest, does it not?

Remember, many of these protesters are people raising their voices in unison, in public, for probably the first time in their lives, picking up the mantle against generations of injustice.

They are joining in a moment in history, and it won’t always go smoothly.

For those in law enforcement, we’d ask for more patience, more understanding and more honesty. And, when they take to the streets, more preparation. Always more preparation.

If you’re driving in a car around a protest, we ask this of you, too.

Because frankly, we expect better than we saw Tuesday night.

That was one of the general points Parkinson made in his talk, that we shouldn’t litigate past mistakes but should instead work to be better, because we can always be better.

He sure is right about that.

And it’s about time it started happening.

This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 5:36 AM.