President Donald Trump announced Monday that he would deploy the active duty military if governors failed to use the National Guard to “dominate” amongst protesters.
“We are ending the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country,” he said. “We will end it now.”
Trump said he already dispatched “thousands and thousands” of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement to stop looting, rioting, violence and property damage.
In a news conference Sunday, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said he has denied the governor’s offered assistance in deploying the National Guard to control protesters.
“I do not wish for the National Guard to enter this city,” said Eddie Garcia, San Jose Police Department chief, in the news conference. “I would like for our police department, our allied agencies and our community to come together so we do not have presence of some type of military force in this city.”
Liccardo said they only have the National Guard helping the city by distributing nearly 3 million meals per week in San Jose throughout warehouses.
Meanwhile, protests over the death of George Floyd continued through the weekend and into Monday in downtown San Jose. A citywide curfew from 8:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. was implemented on Sunday for the next seven days, or until further notice, by way of a proclamation of local emergency.
In Sunday’s news conference, Liccardo said the curfew is intended for the protection of the people and the prevention of looting and property damage.
“[Friday] was the first battle of San Jose protests and it was a surreal experience,” said Joshua Landers, a San Jose resident.
Landers said he attended all three protests throughout the weekend and Friday was by far the most violent day.
“I saw my buddy get dragged off like we were in war,” he said. “Police pushed us back to City Hall, but they didn’t stop pushing us back . . . That was when it got most chaotic.”
Saturday had fewer protesters than the previous protests with approximately 200 people protesting on the sidewalks of City Hall and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library.
San Jose resident Rylee Stafford said in an email to the Spartan Daily that Saturday’s protesters broke into groups that held signs and sat together, holding each other.
“It was very different to see compared to other folks who are storming the front lines and chanting,” Stafford said.
As protests continued in downtown Sunday afternoon, Liccardo said he kneeled with protesters to express his solidarity.
Stafford said some people seemed thankful that he showed up and happy he was a part of the movement.
However, Landers said he believes Liccardo was just making a political move because he had no microphone while he listened to what some of the people had to say and many protesters couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“I thought it was him just showing face and I don’t think he was there to accomplish much,” Landers said. “I don’t think the mayor being out there helped anybody.”
Over 100 police officers formed a line on Santa Clara Street and Fourth Street to keep people off the road, thereby disrupting traffic.
Landers said protesters were asking police to kneel with them and thought that Liccardo would have helped, but most of the police refused.
He said at a certain point in the evening the police called the protest on the sidewalks of City Hall an unlawful assembly and started to shoot tear gas and loud explosives toward the peaceful protesters.
“We left City Hall and we marched down Santa Clara [Street] towards the SAP center,” Landers said. “We made our way south of Market street . . . Eventually we got to San Carlos and 10th [Street] and police were swarming, reminding us that we’re breaking curfew.”
He said he saw a sheriff’s bus around 9:30 p.m. approaching a group of approximately 50 protesters, which he assumed was used to transport a large group of arrested individuals.
SJPD Chief Garcia said over 100 arrests had been made within the 48 hours before the news conference on Sunday, but they do not have all the numbers of violent crimes and property crimes.
He said that media, medics and essential activities are exempt from the curfew, otherwise, the consequences of breaking the curfew is a violation and SJPD is “going to be very judicious” in the way they handle violations.
“As these protests wear into the third day, we have seen too many episodes of the few taking advantage of this moment to exploit these protests,” Liccardo said.
Liccardo posted a video on Twitter Saturday outside Horace Mann Elementary school, in which he said volunteers were out at 5 a.m. to clean graffiti off the school’s walls with scrubbers and acetone, as well as clean up debris.
Chief Garcia said during Sunday’s news conference that there have been millions of dollars in damage to public and private property and numerous violent acts against first responders and peaceful protesters.
He said that even though protests are occurring downtown, the curfew is to be implemented citywide in order to prevent such planned lootings.
“There has been looting to private businesses . . . and we have intelligence of planned lootings in other areas of the city,” Garcia said.
