A SUMMER OF PROTESTS
By: Captain Jason Kravetz and Police Chief Laura Farinella of the Laguna Beach Police Department
Many reading this article are members of smaller to mid-size Police agencies which serve communities who have their own“ busy” times of year. These are times when you find yourselves maximizing resources and calling everyone into action. Sometimes these take the form of local parades, festivals or hometown events.
While our community of 24,000 residents, already entertains 6 million visitors each year, we hunker down during the summer months to maximize resources and serve the needs of everyone. This summer was much different because of a group of protestors calling themselves,“ America First” and“ Onward America.” Their primary organizer selected Laguna Beach as his First Amendment protest platform because we were the site of the Orange County Democratic Headquarters and Hillary Clinton did a fundraisers here.
Their monthly protests gained attention from the alt-right groups and white supremacists. What originally attracted 50 people ended up with a crowd of 3,000 on Sunday August 20th.
THE BEGINNING:
The first protest in May almost went unnoticed. The Watch Commander happened to be driving down the street and noticed a small group of white supremacist looking people marching with American Flags. They were coming from Main Beach and appeared to be holding signs supporting various causes(“ build the wall,”“ illegal immigration,”“ support the President”).
We spoke to some of the participants and discovered they had an active Facebook, Instagram and Twitter feed with future events planned in Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach.( One of these events ended violently at Huntington State Beach and made its rounds on social media.)
Each time the group came to town, we noticed they were attracting more participants. Their largest protest attracted nearly 100 people and was staffed by 15 Laguna Beach Officers. Fortunately, there were no counter-protestors except for the random person walking by to express their displeasure.
AUGUST 20TH PROTEST:
The America’ s First people had a protest scheduled on Main Beach for Sunday August 27, 2017. Since we knew in advance, we began writing our Incident Action Plan and notified all 52 Laguna Beach Officers that they would be working.
After the violence in Charlottesville on August 12th, and the Barcelona terrorist car attack on August 17th, the protest organizers moved up their protest date to August 20th in order to capitalize on the negative energy.
We immediately contacted all our local law enforcement partners in the region and ensured that we had at least 150 officers available to us. Unfortunately, it wasn’ t enough! Within 30 minutes of arriving and deploying, we called in reinforcements and received another 100 officers. We were outnumbered by the amount of counter-protestors who showed up from several other counties and states.
34 California Police Chief | www. californiapolicechiefs. org