S.J. overnight curfew order will be lifted today
Dozens of protesters, including two journalists, have been detained
Despite five days of continued protests outside of City Hall, San Jose on Tuesday became the Bay Area’s first large city to make plans to lift its overnight curfew order after dozens of residents argued that it violated their civil rights.
Culminating a five-hour discussion about the merits of the curfew, the San Jose City Council voted 10-1 to amend the citywide regulation, which went into effect Sunday to curb violence and looting and did not have a designated end date. The curfew is now set to expire at 5 a.m. today. Councilwoman Dev Davis dissented, citing a desire to let the city manager and police chief use their discretion to decide when it was the appropriate time to lift the order.
“I think the message that we currently have is the wrong message and that it has brought about a lot more anxiety and incited more individuals to want to react to that,” said Councilman Raul Peralez, who suggested the curfew’s new expiration date. “I think we’ve given them something to react to.”
As the council debated the issue, demonstrators gathered in downtown San Jose for the fifth day in a row — the third day under the curfew order — to protest police brutality and the death of George Floyd.
Over the past several days, police officers donning riot gear have deployed more aggressive tactics to crack down on those responsible for burglarizing businesses. Cops have arrested dozens of protesters for breaking the curfew — at times without an apparent effort to distinguish between passive bystanders and those potentially engaged in crime — and detained at least two journalists, including a Mercury
News reporter, despite an explicit exemption for news media, police officers, firefighters, delivery and utility employees, and certain other essential workers.
Peralez said that because the protests stemmed from a police officer killing someone that they were attempting to arrest, providing officers in San Jose with a reason to detain peaceful protesters did not seem appropriate.
“The curfew at the moment I think is just pissing off a lot of our really goodhearted citizens,” he said. “I don’t think it changes at all — much like regular laws — the minds of people who just want to go out and break them.”
Although more than a dozen cities and three counties in the Bay Area have imposed curfews since the organized protests began here Friday, San Jose was not the first to diverge and make plans to ease up. Santa Clara on Tuesday joined Portland, Oregon, in lifting its order.
In a statement Tuesday the city of Santa Clara said that “while two businesses — Walgreens and Skechers — experienced vandalism
Monday night, the imminent threat of larger-scale looting throughout Santa Clara can now be managed through regular police authority.”
San Jose decided to implement a curfew after the first two days of demonstrations Friday and Saturday, which began as peaceful protests in downtown but ended with serious acts of violence, looting and property damage.
City officials said they initially wanted to give people the “opportunity to vent,” but after watching those incidents transpire and hearing reports of “planned looting” Sunday night, city officials felt they needed another mechanism to crack down on illegal activity.
“I have never in my time here seen the violence that I have seen this weekend in the city. This is not normal for San Jose,” San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia said Tuesday, citing rocks, wooden sticks, fireworks, glass bottles and “reported bottles of urine” that have been hurled at his officers.
Garcia said the curfew has been a critical cool for officers to be able to use to keep “peaceful protesters safer, as well as officers.”
“Had these remained peaceful, we wouldn’t be in this situation. I wouldn’t be asking for this tool for my officers,” he said.
Under the city’s current curfew order, residents must remain in their homes and stay out of streets and public areas from 8:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. The order provides exemptions for police officers, emergency personnel, members of the media and individuals seeking medical care or experiencing homelessness.
More than two dozen residents tuned in to the virtual council meeting Tuesday night and sent a resounding message: The city was turning their freedom to assemble into a crime and cops in riot gear were only escalating the peaceful protests, they said. One person even compared the measure with “New York City under stop-and-frisk.”
Jessica Matthew, a San Jose resident who ran from rubber bullets and tear gas at a protest over the weekend, said officers are using an “overly aggressive manner” to deal with peaceful protesters and expressed concern that the curfew would only cause that aggression to worsen.
“The police frankly terrorized us for no good reason,” Matthew said. “You enacting curfew is literally telling all of us that you do not respect our right to peacefully assemble and make our voices heard.”
Amber Clark, a downtown San Jose resident, said she sees the curfew as evidence that the city is “militarizing against its citizens in an urgent desire to take away our rights.”
“I don’t feel safe engaging my rights to free speech and assembly with police using riot gear, tear gas and rubber bullets,” she said. “When my black and brown friends are under threat from an overmilitarized police force, I feel I should have the right to peacefully assemble.”
A far smaller number of community members, including one that represents downtown businesses that sustained looting and vandalism during protests over the weekend, voiced support for the curfew.
“The destruction of our business districts, looting of stores and shops, setting fires and vandalism of property, compromises the very causes we so urgently want to change,” said Scott Knies, a longtime executive of the city’s downtown association. “Let things cool down and we can concentrate on the hard work ahead in rebuilding a more equitable San Jose.”
The council will reevaluate its decision Friday morning after what is expected to be the first night of protesting without a curfew in five days.
Depending on what transpires, the city said it could decide to establish another curfew.