S.J. mayor criticizes vandals for defacing home with graffiti
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo criticized several people who spray-painted his home Friday night after hundreds gathered across the city in a new round of demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality, this time sparked by the police shooting of Black resident Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Blake was shot seven times by Kenosha police Officer Rusten Sheskey last Sunday, prompting rallies and condemnations from civil rights leaders, politicians and communities across the nation. He survived the shooting but was left paralyzed from the waist down.
Protesters gathered outside San Jose City Hall and marched through the streets carrying signs and chanting slogans. At one point, a group of protesters stopped to do the Cupid Shuffle at San Pedro Square; later, several people marked the front of Liccardo’s home with messages such as “BLM” and “San Jose will be free soon,” along with Blake’s name. Video of the latter incident captured by San Jose Inside also showed people throwing objects and a fire burning in the street.
“I’m tremendously heartened by the response of dozens of my neighbors who dropped everything late last night to spend a couple of hours scrubbing graffiti,” Liccardo said Saturday, adding, “They contrast sharply with the roughly hundred so-called ‘protesters’ who stood by silently — or even cheered — as a flag was burned and while ‘f— you’ and other messages were scrawled on our home.”
San Jose police responded to the spray-painting at Liccardo’s home, according to Officer Steven Aponte; they later arrested one person in relation to a separate vandalism incident at City Hall.
The protests, which coincided with the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington, are among a series that have gripped the Bay Area this spring and sum
mer. San Jose and Oakland in particular saw massive turnout for about 10 days in early June after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the fatal California Highway Patrol shooting of Erik Salgado in Oakland.
About 250 people took to the streets in Oakland on Friday. Around 11 p.m., police said a group was blocking the intersection at 14th Street and Broadway, and “officers were advising the group to leave the roadway.”
More than a dozen people were arrested, including one on suspicion of pointing a laser at an officer, police said.
Lasers also allegedly were pointed at officers at a protest in Oakland on Wednesday. In addition, “agitators in the crowd” smashed windows and set fires, including one inside the Alameda County Superior Court building at 1225 Fallon St., police said.
In San Jose, the spraypainting of Liccardo’s home came at the end of a summer filled with fraught discussions over policing and systemic racism in the nation’s 10th-largest city. As hundreds of San Jose residents have called for defunding the force, city leaders are in talks with Silicon Valley real estate billionaire John Arrillaga for the potential development of an approximately $43 million-plus police training and academy complex, this news organization first reported.
The council has voted to maintain the police force’s $449 million budget, setting aside almost $2 million for new equity and policing reforms.
It wasn’t the first time Liccardo’s home — or the home of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf — has been vandalized in connection with a protest.
“We’ve just come to realize this is part of the job,” Liccardo said. “The reality is there are a lot of people who are suffering in real ways right now, and this is nothing compared to what a lot of people are going through in the community right now.”