Floyd’s burial had big police presence
A large force of local, state and federal law enforcement officers, prepared for widespread violence, were watching as mourners buried George Floyd at Pearland’s Houston Memorial Gardens cemetery, documents show.
The Pearland Police Department called in 475 officers fromlocal, state and federal agencies, with 800 additional members of the National Guard available on standby, according to documents obtained by the ACLU of Texas and first reported by Vice News.
They included officers fromthe Texas Department of Public Safety, the Pasadena Police Department, the National Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Galveston County Sher-
iff’s Office, along with agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The assembled force was ready for un rest ranging from hurled water bottles and bricks to property damage to rioting and looting.
An after-action report indicates that EMS responded to 20 cases of heat-related illness.
Pearland officials said that they expected crowds of up to 60,000 and that the preparations reflected that.
Critics said that while demonstrators across the U.S. were protesting police violence, the documents showan outsize police response to a funeral.
“This happened at a point when this community, Houston, and George Floyd’s family were mourning brutal loss of life at the hand of police officers,” said Shaw Drake, policy counsel for the ACLU of Texas’ Border Rights Center, “and the police response was to put snipers on roofs.”
An incident action plan shows the police department’s objectives included facilitating Floyd’s entombment in the cemetery, peaceful protest, ensuring public safety and keeping the public and local businesses informed about the event.
The records, labeled “highly confidential,” show the police department was also prepared for significant unrest.
A “Rules of Engagement” plan shows planned responses to lowlevel actions such as throwing water bottles and higher levels of response including “gas munitions.” The plans noted that if protesters threw water bottles, CBP’s tactical squad was “geared up and ready to deploy.” If events worsened, the National Guard was to serve as a “last line of defense.”
Both the FBI and DPS used airplanes to provide surveillance during the operation, which cost the city of Pearland more $326,000, and law enforcement deployed half a dozen “sniper teams” on rooftops of nearby buildings to tamp down on potential violence.
The documents show dozens of members of CBP’s tactical squad— called BORTAC — were among thosewho arrived to help monitor the protests. The group, which receives training similar to the U.S. Special Operations Forces, was created to respond to civil unrest in immigrant detention centers and “provides a global response capability,” CBP documents show. But the unit has come under heavy criticis mafter deployments to Portland, Ore., Washington, D.C., and other cities in the wake of Floyd’s death. Shaw and others argue that Floyd’s burial was far outside the scope of CBP’s border protection mandate. The group is attempting to style itself as a national police agency, they said.
Drake said the documents demonstrate an example of a “militarized overpolicing response” to the funeral of a man whose death launched an outcry against police brutality.
“It really paints a chilling picture of police collaboration across local, state and national levels,” Shaw said, “that these agencies, when working in collaboration, can bring this extremely militarized response and descend on an event like George Floyd’s burial with such potential for using violence.”
Former CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske — who led the agency from 2014 to 2017 — said the El Paso-based team has occasionally assisted law enforcement in past years, usually in high-stakes situations in rural areas, such as tracking down inmates who escaped from a prison in New York near the Canadian border in 2015. The unit’s recent deployment to Pearland or cities around the country grappling with civil unrest was far outside the CBP’s scope or the squad’s expertise, he said.
“Policing in urban areas, particularly when you have civil unrest, is not something that would be, I think, a good use of BORTAC,” he said. “The culture ofwhat they do, and where they work — the southwest border — that does not translate to an urban environment, whether Austin, Houston, Portland or anywhere else.”
An after-action report shows concerned citizens sharing screenshots with Pearland police of several threats on social media to “loot” Pearland Town Center. One screenshot showed a Facebook user with the message: “Y’all care about looting and stores burning but if y’all don’t listen and help change this problem we will be showing up to y’all neighborhoods for war.”
Last week, Pearland police officials said their plan came together after being told to expect up to 60,000 people — which would swamp the resources of the city’s 170-officer department — while trying to juggle the safety of the attendees, and preparing for potential demonstration by Second Amendment supporters, antifa groups and others.
“With such an emotionally charged event we were unsure who else may have been drawn to this event with ill intentions,” Pearland Assistant Police Chief C. Randall said in a lengthy email. “We had the duty to protect Mr. Floyd’s family, those in attendance, and our residents. Our concern was to create the proper atmosphere for a safe event.”
“We faced many unknowns,” he continued, noting that the department would have fielded a smaller response if it had been told the number of mourners would be just a few thousand people. “What we did know is that if something went bad, itwould be a national event and could have brought further divide in our country.”
Ashton Woods, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Houston, scoffed at the department’s concerns.
“What the hell were we going to destroy in Pearland? A city that does not have hardly any street lights, doesn’t have sidewalks, doesn’t even have accommodations to even protest,” he said. “Where the hell would we even go?”
Randall also said that the city requested BORTAC assistance because it did not have sufficient officers trained and equipped for potential “civil unrest” and because the Houston Police Department was busy handling protests in Houston.
CBP officials did not respond to a request for comment.
An FBI official said the agency provided assistance after a re-quest from Pearland police.
“FBI assistance was provided to the Pearland Police Department, at the request of that agency, for the purpose of maintaining and ensuring the safety of the participants and the general public,” said Christina Garza, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Houston Field Office.
Pearland city spokesman Joshua Lee said that “the CBP personnel who came to Pearland were professional during our interactions with them. They took 100 percent direction from Pearland PD during our operation and only did what Pearland police asked for them to do. Pearland police appreciated their willingness to respond to our request for personnel trained and equipped in case we faced civil unrest.”
The June 9 funeral followed protests across the nation, including a 60,000-person march in Houston, one of the region’s largest in years. During demonstrations in Houston in the weeks before the funeral, police officers arrested about 700 protesters, the vast majority of whom saw their cases later dismissed.
In the end, Floyd’s burial in Pearland proceeded without problems. At his funeral, police detained one mourner who hit another person — then released that person when the victim declined to press charges. And police investigated a bomb scare after watching a person enter Floyd’s mausoleum wearing a fanny pack and leaving without it.
The police department’s afteraction report shows officials were generally pleased with how the operation was carried out. “The social media posts resulting from the event have been almost universally positive toward the city and its response,” they wrote.