Aiming vehicles at protesters is a crime — it’s time SLO police enforced that

A peaceful protest in downtown San Luis Obispo once again took an ugly turn Wednesday night, thanks to an apparently irate motorist looking to make a statement against a cause he disagrees with.

Once again, video captured the encounter and shows an aggressive driver making a flagrantly unsafe move, gunning his vehicle through a group of three protesters at the intersection of Higuera and Osos streets.

Once again, a driver put pedestrians’ lives at risk and barreled off, with nary a response from police at the scene.

As a result, once again, we’re looking square in the face of what we hope is not a full-blown double standard in San Luis Obispo law enforcement.

The driver, who identified himself on the Protest SLO Facebook page as David Medzyk, can be seen in the video turning left from Osos Street onto Higuera at the same time as protesters crossed with the light.

Before disappearing out of frame for a moment, he suddenly roars through the scene, apparently clipping two women as they jump out of the way.

As if that weren’t enough, after the incident, Medzyk proceeded straight to the police station, where he reported a rather different set of events than what the video shows.

“I was assaulted while turning from Osos to Higuera, by the BLM mob downtown just now. Nearly knocked off my bike,” Medzyk wrote on the Protect SLO page. “I am at SLOPD filing a report.”

This would be comical if it weren’t so ridiculous. But the severity of what nearly happened cannot be ignored.

Enough is enough.

We have not suddenly become a society where vehicles have the right of way and can do anything they please, pedestrians be damned.

Yes, marching in the street and blocking traffic can be dangerous and should be avoided without proper police precautions. But aiming a vehicle at protesters is many times more dangerous, and that behavior suddenly appears to be getting a pass in this town.

This is not the first time protesters and drivers have gotten into recent altercations in SLO.

During the July 21 march — which included an hourlong blockade of U.S. 101 and ended in the arrest of protest leader Tianna Arata — multiple videos captured instances of cars forcing their way through pedestrians in their path, under the farcical defense that the were afraid of the “mob mentality.”

Yet no charges were filed. In fact, in both cases law enforcement spun stories placing fault squarely at the feet of demonstrators.

Now we have an even more egregious case, compounded in its outrageousness by a aggressor who somehow claims to be the victim.

Too bad that tall tale doesn’t jibe at all with what we can see with our own eyes.

From the short video snippet, it doesn’t appear that anyone so much as laid a finger on the motorcycle rider, much less committed any sort of assault.

Instead, it shows him revving his engine and barreling through the three women protesters standing near the street corner.

LeiYahna Jefferson, one of two women who reported being struck, was placed most at risk. She is clearly in the crosswalk as the bike roars directly at her and she leaps to safety.

“He came at full force, and he hit me,” Jefferson said.

Fortunately, no one appeared to be seriously injured.

But that doesn’t excuse the driver’s behavior.

It was an inherently dangerous and aggressive move, and it comes at a time when San Luis Obispo already is on edge, on the very day that the District Attorney’s Office charged Arata with 13 misdemeanors.

The next day, several hundred protesters gathered outside the County Courthouse to witness Arata’s first court appearance, where she requested a delay in entering a plea.

That means the case will continue, and we can expect more of this kind of civil protest for as long as it takes to play out, which could be months.

What will not help us navigate the ensuing days are any forms of violence from either side.

So let’s spell this out. Driving into protesters — even if they are blocking the road — is unacceptable, from either a moral or legal standpoint.

We shouldn’t need an expert opinion to make this point, but here’s one anyway:

“Deadly force is not allowed unless it’s a response to a threat of death or great bodily harm,” University of Pennsylvania law professor Kermit Roosevelt told PolitiFact for a June article that debunked the idea that it’s OK to drive into protesters blockading a road.

“Hitting someone with a car is deadly force. So, the question would be, at what point would a motorist reasonably believe they were threatened with death or serious injury. Just blocking the road is clearly not enough, though.”

We’ll repeat that: “Just blocking the road is clearly not enough.”

Wednesday’s protesters weren’t even doing that.

The motorcyclist easily could have gone around the women, slowly and safely to the two open lanes.

Or how about this: He could have calmly waited a few seconds for the women to move out of the way.

He did not choose to do that, and we can offer a pretty good guess why.

Based on his Facebook page, it’s clear that Medzyk’s conservative views collide with the beliefs of protesters. His posts include satirical, animated videos highly critical of Arata and SLO Mayor Heidi Harmon, as well as memes disparaging Democrats and the Black Lives Matter movement, while supporting Donald Trump.

That’s his right, even though people may disagree with his opinions.

What’s not his right is to deliberately aim a deadly weapon at protesters simply because he doesn’t subscribe to their beliefs or finds their activism an irritation.

Likewise, Medzyk evoking the specter of some fearful “BLM mob” — this coming from a U.S. Army vet on a Harley Davidson — is both absurd and no excuse for such dangerous behavior. It wasn’t in the cases on July 21. It’s even less so here.

The fact is, there is a reason we have laws protecting pedestrians. Suddenly ignoring those laws and letting drivers act like road warriors will only lead to more dangerous altercations — until at some point, someone will end up badly hurt or dead, and it likely won’t be the person operating the powerful machine.

At the moment, the San Luis Obispo Police Department is still actively investigating the incident and has interviewed several witnesses, as there were many present. They’re asking for additional witnesses, recordings and information. Contact Detective Stradley at 805-594-8068 or via email at estradley@slocity.org.

Ultimately, we hope police will see this incident for what it is: a crime.

Hit and run, assault with a deadly weapon, reckless driving ... take your pick. Also, don’t forget filing a false police report.

So SLOPD, the ball is once again in your court. How will you play it this time?

This story was originally published September 4, 2020 at 5:00 AM.