Two weeks after a peaceful demonstration against police brutality ended with officers driving a group of young people off a Walnut Creek freeway onramp with tear gas, rubber bullets and police dogs, the City Council on Tuesday night got an eight-hour earful from angry residents about the debacle.
It also heard from the city’s police brass, who said changes have been made since the June 1 confrontation. For one thing, police won’t bring dogs to protests any more, as happened after the central Contra Costa SWAT Team sicced a dog on a young Black protester on June 1, leaving him wounded from bites and scratches.
“Quite frankly, we don”t see a lot of this in Walnut Creek,” police Captain Jay Hill said of the civil unrest that rocked the city. “We don’t deal with this on a daily basis. And when we do see it, we try to learn from it.”
Police Chief Thomas Chaplin announced last week that the department would ban carotid holds — a type of neck restraint in which an officer puts pressure on the carotid arteries to block blood flow. That was a response to the death of George Floyd when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.
But the dozens of local residents who called into Tuesday’s council meeting urged police to do more and pressed the council to divert funding from the police department to health and social services.
Council members had called for police to explain their actions during the demonstration and a downtown looting spree the day before, as well as other demonstrations and protests between May 30 and June 5.
The evening after a small peaceful protest in Walnut Creek on May 30, about 600 people swarmed through Broadway Plaza and nearby parts of downtown, looting about 40 businesses, including anchor stores like Macy’s, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus.
Hill noted that police were overwhelmed and outnumbered, so the department called on mutual aid partner agencies for help as it learned about plans for looting at Broadway Plaza only about 20 minutes before it happened that May 31 night.
On June 1, a demonstration in Civic Park drew about 3,000 people to listen to speakers and hold signs in support of Black lives and against police brutality. But the gathering turned violent as police approached the protesters — mostly young adults and teenagers — after they marched onto Interstate 680. With police firing tear gas and sponge bullets, several young people were injured, including a young woman who was hit in the head with a rubber bullet and later hospitalized.
Callers to the Tuesday night council meeting condemned the police response to the June 1 event as too forceful.
“Given the purpose of the march, police should have been on their best behavior,” Susan Antolin said. “But if that was their best, they are in deep trouble.”
Police said they are still investigating the response and would return at a later date to provide a more complete review.
Many questioned whether the city had learned anything or made changes after the June 2, 2019 police killing of Miles Hall, a young Black resident who was shot by officers while experiencing a mental health crisis.
City Manager Dan Buckshi said police started training in de-escalation techniques and working with the county’s Crisis Intervention Team well before the recent protests. City leaders had been meeting regularly with the Friends of Scott, Alexis and Taun Hall — a group that supports Miles Hall’s family and is pushing for police reform.
Buckshi defended the city’s progress, noting “these issues are extremely complex” and social services mostly come from the county, with directives and funding from the state.
Taun Hall — Miles Hall’s mother — said she was disappointed that the city had not made more progress in delivering non-police responses for people experiencing mental health crises.
“We are asking you guys to be innovative,” she said. “We need it to start in Walnut Creek. We need a non-police response.”
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Author: Annie Sciacca