Hundreds protest death of George Floyd in Anaheim; 20-plus arrested

Hundreds gathered in Anaheim to protest the death of George Floyd, listening to local speakers at a neighborhood park, demonstrating at City Hall and walking through the streets of downtown on Monday evening, June 1.

For a few hours in the late afternoon, a large crowd of more than 500 people, drawn from three different protests within the city, peacefully walked on some of the community’s main downtown roadways.

As night fell, and as police announced an unlawful assembly after curfew, smaller pockets of around 200 or so remained, with police briefly shooting rubber bullets to disperse the protesters. By 9 p.m. most of the protesters seemed to have left the area.

Police arrested roughly 20 to 25 people in the area of the demonstration, Anaheim Police Sgt. Shane Carringer said. Most were taken into custody on suspicion of violating curfew.

However, three adults and one minor were arrested at about 6:45 p.m., after allegedly stealing from the nearby Northgate Market, and were taken into custody on suspicion of commercial burglary, Carringer said. Officers had also chased away a person attempting to break into a T-Mobile store about 15 minutes prior.

A large group, which had generally been walking southbound on or near Harbor Boulevard, was stopped before it reached the resort district and Disneyland.

The demonstrations began with several hundred in La Palma Park, as most of those gathered sat on the grass, listening to speakers describe how police brutality has affected their lives and their community.

Many of the protesters arrived with signs bearing slogans such as “There comes a time when silence is betrayal” and “color is not a threat.” While leading the group in a prayer, a man told the crowd “enough is enough.”

“There’s a lot of people hoping you are going to lose your sanity and attack our city and we are here to prove them wrong,” a speaker said to the afternoon crowd, drawing loud cheers.

Councilman Jose Moreno, who attended the La Palma Park demonstration, said the event was organized by local educators and residents who “saw that some group was calling for some protest with a profane flyer and just got really concerned,” so they created an event they hoped would help show young people “nonviolent, constructive change.”

Anaheim was one of many Southern California cities to institute a curfew Monday. The citywide curfew is in place from 6 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., a decision city spokesman Mike Lyster said was made “out of an abundance of caution to safeguard our community.”

Eluteria Guiettez owns a flower shop right along Anaheim Boulevard and Cypress, and she held sign saying “minority owned business for 20 years.” She tells me she came to watch and encourage the marchers’ right to protest. pic.twitter.com/sTrcG2NPhW

— Jeong Park (@JeongPark52) June 2, 2020

“We want to allow time for peaceful expression in our city and we have two demonstrations that are planned ahead of the curfew, and we would encourage everyone who wants to peacefully and respectfully express themselves on that issue to take advantage of that time,” he said earlier in the day.

Most of the signs and the speakers at the park described the police and the criminal justice system, and its impact on minority communities.

“I do not want to see anyone hurt, I don’t want to give them an excuse to shut us down and not have our voices raised,” said Jose Lara, an Anaheim resident. “Let’s organize and let’s win.”

Around 5 p.m., the hundreds gathered at the park marched to Anaheim City Hall, where the second protest of the day had just gotten underway. The combined group was estimated by city officials at more than 500.

Steve Salazar, a Navy veteran who was one of the first to arrive at the City Hall protest, held a sign that read “Justice 4 George.” Salazar said he had no plans to demonstrate until he watched the video of Floyd’s arrest.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Salazar said, choking back tears. “I watched a murder. I had to come out here to protest what happened.”

At the City Hall complex, some in the large crowd moved toward the building to confront police, who were cordoned off behind yellow tape, while hundreds more stood closer to Anaheim Boulevard.

For much of the evening, the protesters wound their way through downtown, at one point ending up back at La Palma Park. Shortly before 7 p.m., a crowd of 50 to 60 gathered near Harbor and Lincoln Avenue for the third protest of the evening.

Minutes later, officials announced through a police helicopter that they were beginning to enforce the curfew.

Some in the crowd began throwing fireworks in the air, and one person running by was saying he had been hit in the eye with what he believed to be a rubber bullet or bean bag round. The crowd backed away from police, while two cars did doughnuts in the street nearby.

The larger crowds began to thin by 8 p.m. Smaller groups, such as a crowd of around 50 protesters at Broadway and Anaheim, remained to taunt police behind concrete barriers who were wearing helmets and had batons.

Monday was the sixth day of protests around the country to call attention to police brutality, racial injustice and the death of Floyd, who died in Minneapolis after a police officer held his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.

Most demonstrations and marches have been peaceful, but some have devolved into clashes between police and protesters, vandalism and looting.

In Orange County, large demonstrations have previously been held in Santa Ana, Huntington Beach and San Clemente, with smaller gatherings in Irvine and Laguna Beach.

A rowdier Saturday night gathering in Santa Ana ended with several hundred protesters throwing fireworks and other explosives at police. And a Sunday afternoon protest in Huntington Beach ended with police firing pepper balls at a crowd of hundreds of demonstrators who would not disperse.

In Anaheim, ahead of the 5 p.m. protest at City Hall, the front windows of the municipal building and the Muzeo museum across the street were boarded up, and the business community helped shop owners on nearby Center Street get plywood for their stores, Lyster said, adding that city leaders hoped it would turn out to be “an exercise of caution” that wasn’t needed.

Anaheim has its own history of demonstrations following police use of force.

In 2012, an Anaheim officer shot and killed 25-year-old Manuel Diaz during a brief foot chase, a death that followed a series of other officer involved shootings, touching off days of unrest and protests that culminated with a riot in the city’s downtown area. Several year’s later, a federal jury found that the officer who shot Diaz used excessive force.

Councilman Moreno said that while the Anaheim Police Department could still improve its relationship with the community, things have come a long way with the implementation of body cameras for officers and a citizens police review board.

Moreno said he was attending the demonstration to listen and hopefully learn “what can we do to provide the kind of community policing that people can trust, and that we never see another death” of an unarmed person at the hands of police.

Staff Writers Alicia Robinson and Eric Licas contributed to this report.