Latinos stand up to looting
Gatherings largely peaceful as ACLU joins chorous for lifting lockdowns.
On the Eastside and in Orange County, longtimers keep watch over their barrios.
More large protests against the killing of George Floyd and local police violence spread across Southern California on Wednesday, along with growing pressure to end curfews imposed over the weekend.
Police reported few problems by Wednesday evening, after dealing with scattered looting and vandalism Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Officials pushed back curfews later into the day, amid pressure to lift them all together.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said that while the curfews may have been warranted on Sunday and Monday nights, “now it seems like they are being used to arrest peaceful protesters. I don’t think they are needed anymore.” Mayor Eric Garcetti said the curfew could be lifted if things remained quiet Wednesday night.
On Tuesday, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Kathryn Barger requesting that she rescind or restrict the curfew order.
ACLU senior counsel
Ahilan Arulanantham wrote in the letter that the U.S. Constitution does not permit the county to order such a sweeping restriction on free speech and travel to address “a few localized attacks on property.”
“We recognize that in the last few days some individuals have damaged and stolen property in areas where many others have engaged in peaceful protests, but that unlawful conduct cannot justify a state of emergency in the entire county that effectively places over 10 million people under house arrest for twelve hours every evening and morning,” Arulanantham wrote.
The biggest demonstration took place at the Civic Center, where thousands protesting Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey for her handling of police killings barely broke stride as the ground began to sway from the ripples of a 5.5 earthquake centered near Ridgecrest around 6:30 p.m.
“The D.A. should be held accountable for her lack of leadership and care for the people that we lost,” said protester Al Calderon, 26. “It’s unsettling to hear these families’ stories.”
On Wednesday, 61 people were charged with looting and other crimes in connection to the break-ins, fires and thefts across L.A. County. About 2,500 people were arrested between Friday and Tuesday morning during the largely peaceful protests.
“I support the peaceful organized protests that already have brought needed attention to racial inequality throughout our society, including in the criminal justice system,” Lacey said in a statement. “I also have a constitutional and ethical duty to protect the public and prosecute people who loot and vandalize our community.”
A series of peaceful protests over the police killing of Floyd rolled through Newport Beach on Wednesday.
Though the protests were calm, a television camera captured a scary scene on Balboa Boulevard when a vehicle zipped through a crowd of demonstrators — eventually colliding with a bicyclist.
No one was injured, and the driver stopped and was cooperating with the investigation, Newport Beach Police Department spokeswoman Heather Rangel said. It didn’t appear to have been deliberate, she said.
For Gale Oliver Jr., a pastor at the Greater Light Family Church in Santa Ana, a protest against racism and police brutality in one of Orange County’s wealthiest enclaves was a sign of the times.
“It’s a blessing that this is going on in Newport Beach,” said Oliver, who is black. “I mean, this is going on in Newport Beach? I guess America is finally listening.”
Oliver said pastors in Santa Ana began meeting with Orange County law enforcement officials about five years ago in hopes of ending “policing from the point of view that they’re under attack.” He’s seen progress, but more needs to be done, he said, here and throughout the country.
“Two men have said, ‘I can’t breathe.’ One said it eight times, one said it 11 times,” Oliver said, referring to the deaths of Floyd and Eric Garner, who died in 2014 while being restrained in a chokehold by a New York City policeman. “‘I can’t breathe’ — what that really means is there’s things that will suffocate you. Racism will suffocate you. Hate will suffocate you.”
Kyle Scallon, 21, turned out Wednesday to protest not just Floyd’s death but also a discriminatory approach he believes law enforcement in Orange County has taken for too long. Driving in his hometown of Mission Viejo and elsewhere in the county, Scallon said, he has been pulled over by officers intent on questioning his girlfriend, who is Creole.
“They ask me for my license,” he said, “and they ask her where she lives, where she’s going, what she’s doing in the car.” In his experience, Scallon said, the default view for police is to assume people of color are doing something wrong, no matter the circumstances of the encounter.
“I’m here because I just want cops to realize not everyone’s bad,” he said, standing with a group of protesters on the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway. “It’s become the system, but they need to realize not everyone they meet is bad.”
Thousands of people have been arrested in the L.A. region since Saturday. At 8th Street and Crenshaw Boulevard on Tuesday night, police detained dozens of protesters who had converged at the mayor’s residence. The crowd chanted “peaceful protest” intermittently and, for the most part, calmly complied with police as they were cuffed with plastic bands.