Jun 1, 2020
“I Can’t Breathe….”
These words — repeated by George Floyd before his horrible death — have struck a painful chord throughout our troubled nation. They ring a devastating echo of the last utterance by Eric Garner, an African-American man who suffered homicide at the hands of New York City police in 2014, and his death stirs memory of too many other black and brown Americans — Freddy Gray, Philando Castile, and others — who have endured a similar fate in a nation that continues to struggle to overcome a deep history of racism.
Yesterday, I walked out of City Hall to stand with fellow community members in protest, and I listened to several who shared the pain they’ve experienced throughout their lives. I took a knee with them to express a simple message: I hear you. I may only hear them imperfectly, of course; as a man growing up insulated by white privilege, and not having to fear a police officer’s excessive use of force, I cannot fully appreciate the experience of many of my neighbors. When asked to speak, I took the megaphone to thank them for sharing their righteous outrage — and to remind them that we are one community, and that many of the police officers who stood nearby shared their outrage.
Our San Jose community also desperately needs to take a breath. Several community members wishing to peacefully protest have shared with me that they have felt intimidated and suffocated by a large police presence at daily rallies along East Santa Clara Street. Fatigued San Jose Police officers have been given the seemingly impossible task of ensuring safety for peaceful demonstrators, while identifying and arresting those few members of the crowd who seek to use destructive and violent means to injure our residents and officers, loot small business, and destroy our beloved San Jose. Too often, a few with self-serving ends have sought to hijack the crucially vital message of the many, sending two protesters and one police officer to the hospital, and doing damage to our city. After days of protest, our communities — and cities throughout the nation — remain locked in a tense, uneasy stalemate between those who reasonably but passionately seek to exercise their First Amendment rights, and those tasked to defend the exercise of those rights while dodging bottles, exploding fireworks, and worse.
Yesterday, I stood with Police Chief Eddie Garcia and City Manager Dave Sykes to support the issuance of an 8:30 pm curfew to protect our city and the safety of our residents. Our SJPD had received intelligence of planned looting throughout the night — and their good work averted the efforts of one band of fifty looters at one mall, and several break-ins throughout East San Jose and Downtown business districts. I supported the curfew to give our community a chance to take a breath — and because the veil of night has recently served those who wish to do our city harm.
We have much work to do. Within our own police department, I have heard concerns about the conduct of specific SJPD officers in recent days. As I stated at a press conference yesterday, I found the video clip of the officer uttering expletives at a protester disturbing, and in sharp contrast with what was overwhelmingly admirable restraint and professionalism by hundreds of San Jose Police officer subjected to intensely difficult circumstances. He has been taken off the street pending a full investigation, now underway. Undoubtedly, other officers will have made mistakes as well — under the close scrutiny of video taken by dozens of iPhones — because we have a police department consisting of human beings, not drones. Nonetheless, there will be accountability and consequences.
The work of daily improvement within the San Jose Police Department is well underway, but hardly finished. After I came into office in 2015, and immediately after Chief Garcia’s appointment , San Jose became one of the very first departments in the nation to move forward with deployment of body-worn cameras. The department instituted new training in the academy — made ongoing throughout the tenure of the officer — on bias-based policing, and de-escalation of uses of force. SJPD led the nation by recording the race and demographic information of every individual detained, questioned, pat-and-frisked, or arrested, and that information was scrutinized by independent academics at the University of Texas in 2016 to identify trends and areas for improvement. The Chief barred the use of choke-holds, and installed a public-facing use-of-force dashboard on the SJPD website.
Some of that work has begun paying dividends. We have seen uses of force decline, and last week’s published report from an independent analyst revealed that in recent years, the SJPD has halted the historic pattern of disproportionately using of force on African-American or Latinx arrestees, while also reducing the severity of its use of force, despite rising arrest rates. Progress to be sure, but much work remains to be done: this month, I will propose that voters consider an amendment to the City’s Charter in November to expand the powers and scope of the Independent Police Auditor.
Of course, all of this work occurs within the context of — and in many ways, as the result of — a broader challenge our nation faces in racial and economic inequity. This pandemic has laid bare both our nation’s growing disparity of wealth, and our racial divide, disproportionately sickening and killing black and brown Americans, and disproportionately depriving them of a paycheck. Amid our severe budgetary challenges in the months ahead, I will focus on maintaining funding for the critical programs that I launched years ago to expand opportunities for too many children and youth in high-poverty neighborhoods: engaging hundreds of children in after-school learning in San Jose Learns, introducing more than 7,000 kids to coding and computer science skills through the 5K Coding challenge, providing more than 4,000 summer jobs through San Jose Works, and eliminating financial barriers to college for hundreds of our high-school graduates through the San Jose College Promise and San Jose Aspires. We’re accelerating work in our Digital Inclusion Partnership to help more students learn on-line, expanding free broadband to thousands of families in neighborhoods served by Overfelt High School, and beginning that work for students of Yerba Buena High this year, and three more high schools next. Obviously, we have much more to do to provide every child a fair shot to achieve and succeed, to overcome the forces of our increasingly divisive economy. This work remains our generation’s responsibility, and its mandate.
Working together, we can make progress. But first, let’s all give each other a chance to breathe.
