After 13–year-old Andy Lopez was gunned down by Sonoma County Deputy Sheriff Erich Gelhaus on October 22, 2013 for carrying a toy gun, the people of Santa Rosa built a memorial to the boy in the vacant lot where he was slain. That memorial burned down the evening of January 1. Since then, activists in the Justice for Andy Lopez Coalition have been targeted for harassment and threats from local law enforcement.
Gelhaus, a right-wing gun enthusiast, has written that law enforcement agents should shoot first when unsure whether or not a suspect has a real gun or not, and then try to convince their superiors that they feared for their lives. Nonetheless, he has returned to work for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department. An investigation by the Santa Rosa Police Department is supposedly ongoing, but it is the SRPD itself that has violently attacked activists who have been leading regular protests demanding justice for Lopez.
Lopez’s grieving parents, Rodrigo Lopez and Sujay Lopez Cruz, started receiving anonymous threats shortly before the memorial to their son burned down. Activists with the Justice for Lopez Coalition suspected arson. Mark Aston, Sonoma County Fire Marshal, appeared at the former site of the monument with heavily armed Sheriff’s Deputies to declare that the fire that destroyed the monument had been the result of an accident involving candles that had been part of the memorial.
By January 5, the people of Santa Rosa had rebuilt a larger version of the shrine. They were joined in their efforts by anti-police brutality activist Fred Hampton Jr., son of the murdered Black Panther leader and progressive hip-hop artist Raz Sylon, who performed for the community as they rebuilt the shrine.
On Jan. 6, in an attempt to isolate the Justice for Lopez movement from the greater Santa Rosa community, Sonoma County Sheriff Steve Freitas claimed that, “The crowds [in the Justice for Lopez demonstrations] have actually gotten smaller. But for some people in the crowds the tone and tenor has changed. They’ve become aggressive and adversarial.” Freitas went on to ridiculously argue that, because the city had seen fit to schedule extra cops and sheriff’s deputies to harass and attack peaceful protesters, the protesters had cost tax payers $225,000 in extra salary for law enforcement.
There are signs, however, that the Coalition’s protests have spurred city government to at least acknowledge Lopez’s death. A gag order forbidding the Santa Rosa City Council to discuss the boy’s death with the public, imposed by City Manager Kathleen Millison and City Attorney Caroline Fowler, has been lifted. The proposed meeting with the public has, however, already been postponed several times.
On January 9, Sonoma County law enforcement escalated their attempts to silent the Justice for Lopez movement. Lisbet Mendoza, a 15-year-old Justice for Lopez activist, and a 13-year-old friend had been stapling advertisements around town for a yard sale that was to serve as a fund-raiser for the Coalition. The girls were walking back to Mendoza’s home when several cars filled with both SRPD and Sonoma County Deputies sped into the working-class Latino neighborhood, threw the girls down on the ground and hand-cuffed them. When Mendoza’s parents rushed out of the house to protect the girls, the cops and deputies pulled guns on them. The law enforcement agents then tried to justify their actions by arresting Jose “Louie” Godoy, a Justice for Lopez activist who had previously been arrested while participating in Justice for Lopez protests. They claimed Godoy had pulled a hand gun during a dispute with another driver. Godoy maintained it was a staple gun used to help Mendoza and her friends post the advertisements, and the girls backed up his story.
That night, the SRPD raided the home of another Coalition activists, Ramon Cairo. Cairo, who has previously been arrested on trumped up charges of assaulting a cop at a Lopez protest, was arrested for making “terrorist threats” to Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chairman David Rabbitt. The “terrorist threat” was asking Rabbitt at a public Board of Supervisors meeting how he would feel if his own child was murdered by law enforcement.
Sonoma County law enforcement is attempting to terrorize a community into silence.
