Police still investigating obelisk protest
No arrests made since Plaza monument was toppled
The Santa Fe Police Department says it is still gathering evidence as officers investigate the toppling of the Plaza obelisk last week.
Police haven’t made any arrests in the days following the incident, in which protesters pulled down the 152-year-old monument on Indigenous Peoples Day.
The city has not yet released the police reports, body camera footage or any other public record related to the arrests of Dylan Wrobel and Sean Sunderland, both of whom were taken into custody just before the obelisk fell.
“We are assembling all the officers’ reports and videos so they can be released together at the same time so you have a complete picture” of the incident, said Santa Fe police spokesman Greg Gurulé.
During an Indigenous Peoples Day rally at the Plaza’s bandstand, city contractors were building a new wooden barrier around the obelisk when a few protesters lay down on building materials to obstruct construction.
After police began attempting to forcefully remove those demonstrators, a chaotic scramble broke out that ended with officers vacating the Plaza.
Wrobel, 27, was arrested on a felony charge of battery on an officer and a misdemeanor count of resisting an officer, according to a criminal complaint.
Sunderland, 24, was charged with two misdemeanors: resisting an officer and criminal trespass.
Police announced later last week they were trying to identify two men suspected of participating in the destruction of the obelisk.
According to criminal complaints, both Wrobel and Sunderland were taken to a hospital after officers used pepper spray to detain them.
Santa Fe police Chief Andrew Padilla reiterated Monday that officers did not use other means to arrest the men.
“Pepper spray was used on the two arrests, and no further nonlethal force was used by the officers to disperse the crowd,” Padilla said in a telephone interview. “Then, when officers returned back the Plaza, no further force was used.”
According to an Oct. 14 medical record from Railyard Urgent Care that
When you say, ‘Please don’t let my police hurt you or hurt others,’ I’m asking you pointblank: What is your actual experience to suggest these folks might?” Mayor Alan Webber
was shared with The New Mexican, one protester, who asked to remain anonymous, fractured a finger when police attempted a forceful arrest.
“They used their bodies to pin me up against the stone. I hit my head on the bench at the base of the obelisk,” the protester said. “They cuffed me, but after I said, ‘I hit my head, I need a medic,’ I heard one officer tell another to uncuff me, and they did. Somewhere in that chaos, I broke my finger.”
An unsigned news release from a group calling itself a “coalition of Tewa and Indigenous peoples and accomplices,” which organized the demonstrations around Indigenous Peoples Day, said Santa Fe police “inflicted serious harm, concussive blows, and broken bones to demonstrators exercising their first amendment rights” prior to the obelisk being torn down.
In a video shared with The New Mexican, taken two days before the incident, as police allowed a handful of activists to camp at the base of the obelisk, Mayor Alan Webber argued with activists about their fears over police violence.
“When you say, ‘Please don’t let my police hurt you or hurt others,’ I’m asking you pointblank: What is your actual experience to suggest these folks might?” Webber said in the video posted to social media.
“I’ve been injured by police before,” one activist responded.
“Here?” Webber asked. He started to walk away when the activist said, “No.” The mayor then returned to the conversation.
“We should look each other in the eye and be straight and not have some witty repartee about ‘I’ve been injured by police,’ ” Webber said in the video. “It was very witty. This is another example of how very good you are with words.”