A spirited and highly diverse group of more than a hundred community activists and concerned citizens assembled at the Santa Clara County building Dec. 18 to demand the immediate firing of San José Police Department rogue cop Phillip White as well as justice for local victims of police brutality. After an opening rally, the chanting protesters marched through the main hallway of the county building and on to the nearby Police Administration building, where a concluding rally took place.
The SJPD announced Dec. 16 that it had put White on paid administrative leave and would be “investigating” his threatening comments on Twitter aimed at people who have protested the deaths of unarmed Black men in Ferguson, Mo., Staten Island, N.Y., and elsewhere.
In one of his tweets, White said: “Threaten me or my family and I will use my God given and law appointed right and duty to kill you. #CopsLivesMatter.” In another, he said he would be off-duty at the movies with his gun if anyone “feels they can’t breathe or their lives matter.”
The tweets and hashtag, playing on frequently chanted protest slogans, set off a firestorm on social media (#FireWhiteNow) and prompted the San José protest action called on short notice.
“Officer White wanted to be famous, so we’ll make him famous,” Raj Jayadev, leader of community group Silicon Valley De-Bug, told the crowd. “It will be the fastest firing of a San José police officer we have ever seen. Let’s end that guy’s career today.”
County District Attorney Jeff Rosen listened as letters were handed to him demanding the immediate termination of White and serious investigations of two recent cases of police misconduct.
The first involved a San José State University police officer who on Feb. 21 had shot in the back and killed an unarmed undocumented worker, Antonio Guzman Lopez, claiming he was charging the cop’s partner with a knife. Lopez was actually carrying a construction tool, and eyewitnesses dispute the police account in other key respects.
Lopez’s former partner, Laurie Valdez, told the crowd how she found it so hard to explain to her and Lopez’s young son, Josiah, that the boy’s father was never coming home.
“I don’t know what to do when my five-year-old says he wants to die so he can see his father,” she said. “My son doesn’t know that death is forever.”
The second case involved the police beating and arrest on Jan. 23, 2013, of African American youth Lamar Noble on trumped-up charges of resisting arrest following a routine traffic stop.
As he accepted the letters, Rosen expressed condolences to Laurie Valdez. (For more on this case and the protests and the “Justice for Josiah” campaign it has sparked, see here and here.)
Rosen went on to assure the skeptical audience: “We’re looking very carefully into the cases,” and “I take very seriously my duties as district attorney.”
At police headquarters
After the protesters reached police headquarters, they were met by Chief Larry Esquivel, who said that “as a San José native, man of color and the chief” he was “deeply troubled” by White’s threats and promised a “full investigation.”
Esquivel then accepted from Richard Konda of the Asian Law Alliance, printed-out pages from an online petition with 15,000 electronic signatures gathered in only two days calling for White’s termination.
At police headquarters, video from police cameras showing Lamar Noble being pulled out of his car, beaten, handcuffed and hauled off to jail was projected onto the front of the building while Noble narrated the video, which he had obtained from the police with great difficulty, and re-told his story. Also projected on the wall was one of the tweets sent out by Officer White.
At the end of the rally, Jayadev hailed the march a success and said Esquivel and Rosen’s willingness to come and speak to demonstrators showed “a lot about what’s possible.”
Of course, it remains to be seen to what extent the local powers-that-be take seriously the rising mass movement against racist police killings and brutality and what concessions will be made, including their response to the demand that Officer White be fired.
Right now, at least in San José, they are clearly engaged in damage control. Ultimately, the system of which they are a part must be dismantled and replaced.
This action was sponsored by the Coalition for Justice and Accountability, Silicon Valley De-Bug, San José NAACP, MAIZ, Asian Law Alliance, and San José Peace and Justice Center. Other groups, including Justice for Josiah and ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), participated in the action.
