S.J. police restrict the use of rubber bullets
Chief Garcia: ‘Wewantthe community to know we’re listening to what’s going on locally and nationally’
SAN JOSE » After more than a week of ongoing nationwide protests against police brutality, the San Jose Police Department is instituting a package of crowd control policy changes, highlighted by a ban on rubber bullets to disperse crowds, according to a memo sent to officers Monday.
The announcement of the new practices came on the eve of a city council meeting in which the police department is expected to be called upon to explain the force officers used to break up groups of protesters.
According to the new memo, “projectile impact weapons will only be used in situations where a person is actively attacking an officer or another person or when an armed agitator poses a threat to officers or other peaceful protesters.”
“We don’t have our heads in the sand here,” police Chief Eddie Garcia said Monday. “We want the community to know we’re listening to what’s going on locally and nationally. We can’t move on to healing without this first step.”
In advancing today’s council review, Mayor Sam Liccardo, backed by Vice Mayor Chappie Jones and council members Magdelena Carrasco, Lan Diep and Raul Peralez, was responding to massive outcry and a cascade of protest and witness videos and images of people being injured — some severely — by rubber bullets and other projectiles.
Four Democratic legislators, led by San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, had previously announced a statewide proposal to limit law enforcement’s use of rubber bullets, in reaction to the same kind of criticism.
“Chief Garcia has consistently shown a desire to strive for continuous improvement for this department. It requires a recognition we’re not doing everything right, mistakes are being made, and we can do better. It requires a lot of challenging conversations with those who may resist change,” Liccardo said. “This is welcome step, and by no means a culmination of our work, but the beginning.”
The spotlight on the city and
department was bright enough that the changes also got a swift nod from the city’s police union.
“I am extremely proud of our men and women who worked tirelessly to protect our city and our union will always work on policies and practices that improve our profession,” said Paul Kelly, president of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, in a statement.
The fast-tracked policy changes also include a broad review to update crowd control practices by the department. Those proposed updates include training in “facilitating peaceful protests and media access during unlawful assemblies and curfews.” Officials say that review will involve community input, though it was not immediately clear what form that would take.
Since the San Jose protests began May 29, police and protesters have engaged in dueling narratives, in which scenes of property smashed and objects being hurled at police — an officer was knocked unconscious by a protester’s punch — were matched by the sight of officers in riot gear firing rubber bullets into clusters of protesters, and lobbing tear-gas canisters and flash-bang grenades.
At a news conference Thursday, police detailed the violence police officers faced in the initial days of protests, likening it to a war zone. But protesters and civil rights groups contend police escalated tensions with their militaristic and aggressive conduct.
“It wasn’t just the fact they shot random rubber bullets,” said the Rev. Jethroe Moore, president of the San Jose-Silicon Valley NAACP. “They’re supposed to de-escalate, and be the peacekeepers. Getting rid of rubber bullets is a gesture, but more needs to happen.”
In one of several highprofile incidents, community organizer Derrick Sanderlin, who has worked with SJPD on bias training for officers, was attending the May 29 protest when an officer shot him in the groin with a rubber bullet. He has said his ability to father children could be compromised by the injury.
After hearing about the new policy, Sanderlin told this news organization that attention on police protest response should shift to a weightier discussion about their broader presence at the events.
“We have to take a deeper look, not just at less-than-lethal uses of force at protests, but whether it’s necessary to have a police force there at the scale that we have it,” he said. “It’s not enough to ban rubber bullets during protests. We need to ask questions about why police are there in the first place.”
The department also signaled its intention to immediately adopt upcoming state directives requiring officers to intervene when they see another officer using excessive force. It will be mandated statewide in January 2021 under SB 230, the 2019 police-backed reform legislation that accompanied AB 392, the bill that raised the state threshold for police deadly force from “reasonable” to “necessary.”
The intervention component is a direct response to how the three officers accompanying Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin stood idly by as Chauvin used his knee to press on the neck of a handcuffed and prone George Floyd for nearly nine minutes on Memorial Day. Chauvin has been charged with murder, and the other officers have been charged with aiding him.
Along those lines, SJPD plans to explicitly prohibit officers from using their knee, or any other body part, to perform a chokehold. This move is largely symbolic, since the department officially banned chokeholds in 2016.
Garcia said he understands that the changes his department just implemented are just a portion of what he expects the public to demand.
“There are going to be more things people want to do, and we’ve listened and we’ve heard,” he said. “This is not the panacea, but we’re going to be moving forward in a positive direction.”