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 .
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