Black Lives Matter Pasadena: Police Escalate Incident during Juneteenth Celebration
Channel: Confluence Documentary
Date: 2020-06-21

Graphic content/Police brutality trigger warning:

At the beginning of the Juneteenth celebration, BLM Pasadena was doing chalk therapy in front of the police station writing messages about what was on their mind. The entire courtyard was filling up as a young black man confronted my fellow camera operator and myself attempting to intimidate us. “Stop taking pictures! I’ll knock that camera out of your hands!” We hadn’t taken a photo yet and kept calm, as we were beginning to write an F with chalk on the sidewalk (the only letter that would be completed in the intended “Film the Police” phrase). He looked as if he had been on the streets for some time, disheveled but holding a brand new lunchbox/cooler, an equally new iPhone with camera pointing out on the side pocket; he was clutching a biography of Malcolm X in his hands. The organizer, Jasmine (who has a broken leg) attempted to de-escalate the situation but the young man was began trying to instigate violence and disrupt the event. He attempted to knock over the sound system, flipped a table over, was destroying signs, and finally threw a candle on the ground that sent shattered glass flying into the air cutting the organizer as she tried to intervene. She got on the microphone to address the protesters; everyone began to circle around her for protection as he screamed. Out of nowhere, the cops emerged in a large tactical group and took him to the ground. There was a cluster of police officers on top of the agitator as protesters, patrons of the NAACP meeting at the steps of city hall, and some media saw the commotion and moved in encircling the police shouting “Let him go!” 

As the man on the ground screamed in pain, several cops held him down. Jasmine pleaded with the police to let him go. She was the one who was hurt earlier but she did not want to see another young black man brutalized by the cops. This was not justice for her, this was another instance of law enforcement abusing members of her community. Some people who did not appear to be from the protest began provoking some of the officers as they were told to move back. We ran up to film the arrest and make sure the cops didn’t kill him. 

Finally, they lifted up the young man and threw him in a squad car announcing he was being taken to the hospital but provided no other pertinent information and refused to disclose his name. The police proceeded to march through the protest in an obvious display of intimidation and finally back inside the police station. While the agitator who was arrested was causing problems and threatening others, he did not deserve to be brutalized by police in such an over the top show of force. The tactics used were disproportionate to the situation. As everyone cleared the streets and headed back to the courtyard of the Pasadena police station, someone was seen waving a blue lives matter flag in the street. 

BLM Pasadena held a Peoples Forum right after where Jasmine broke down in tears discussing what just happened. Several others spoke sharing their greivances about systemic racism and the militarization of the police. 

The group then left the police station and marched up the corner of Orange Grove and Fair Oaks, where a truck disregarded the group and nearly ran several people over as he turned right. Luckily everyone was able to evade his vehicle in time. The crowd marched onward south through old town finally ending back where they started in front of the police station. Everyone ate pizza and decompressed as night fell; wondering what happened to the individual who was arrested and if he was okay... 
 


#blacklivesmatter #BLMpasadena #Pasadena #EnoughIsEnough #Juneteenth #FilmThePolice