Tim Steller's column: Tucson police, protesters sustain peace despite differences

Pinal County Sheriff’s Office detectives were there. Homeland Security Investigations agents were there. Then protesters showed up, and so Tucson police did, too.

It was a weird Wednesday in Midvale Park, the subdivision on Tucson’s southwest side. While activists surveilled the area in the afternoon for a reported immigration stop, investigators served a search warrant on a suspected drug trafficker, turning up large loads of fentanyl, cocaine, and meth. Later on, protesters made their way over to this scene from another event nearby.

“When the protesters showed up thinking it was an ICE raid, they didn’t want to listen to reason,” Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple said Tuesday. “They tried to block us from leaving with the suspect’s vehicle.”

“It seemed silly,” he said.

And yet from the protesters’ perspective, it wasn’t. Maru Carrasco of the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos said she and others had gone out to check what was going on earlier in the day, when word came in about this raid nearby.

The connection between the two incidents was unclear, and they simply aren’t buying police stories about what’s going on anymore, Carrasco said.

“There have been other (immigration) detentions in other places, and they say the same thing, ‘This is a drug bust,’ so we don’t trust them.

“Everything is a ‘drug bust,’” Carrasco said.

As federal immigration agents try to accelerate their efforts to deport people, local police are getting caught between them and protesters. In the Los Angeles area, this dynamic has led to serious clashes.

But in Tucson, the relationship between local police and protesters has been a tenuously positive one. The course of events will determine whether their separate interests bring them into clashes or sustain relative harmony.

A delicate situation

Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar acknowledged the delicate situation his department is in when Bill Buckmaster and I interviewed him Friday on Buckmaster’s radio show.

“We’ve had peaceful protests, we have had peaceful protests that turned violent,” Kasmar said. “Things change by the minute, by the day. Events get canceled. Events get re-initiated.”

“There’s going to be no winning here,” he said. But, he added, “I’m confident in my team’s ability. I’m confident in my own decision-making. I’m confident in my support from mayor and council.”

So far, things have gone tolerably well. One incident, which preceded the Midvale Park episode on Wednesday evening, led to arrests when some protesters moved against security contractors protecting a building housing federal immigration offices.

In another incident, which took place during the “No Kings” vehicle protest on Saturday afternoon, police arrested two people in relation to a spray painting incident. One of those arrested is accused of a felony for pepper-spraying officers.

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When I spoke with Sgt. Jason Winsky of the Tucson Police Officers Association Tuesday, he thought back over the many protest episodes of the last 15 years, all the way back to the Occupy movement of 2012, and said, “Tucson’s been really lucky.”

“I feel like we’ve kept that Tucson brand, which is, people are upset, they want to get out and protest, but overall things have been calm, and we hope they stay that way.”

Choosing to coordinate

One of the reasons, Winsky said, is that officers try to give protesters significant leeway, shutting down streets as necessary and making other accommodations.

Another reason is that organizers of the biggest protests in Tucson have chosen to coordinate with police. Bennett Burke, of the umbrella group Democracy Unites Us, said the organizers are aiming to attract as many people as possible to their protests. That means minimizing the risks of attending.

“We have found that the protesters who show up at our actions largely appreciate the police being there in case anything pops off that could endanger our protesters,” he said. “Once we organize a protest, we as Democracy Unites Us don’t have the ability to control how things play out.”

While police and most protesters have found common ground most of the time, there is one type of situation that can lead to confrontations. Tucson police don’t participate in immigration enforcement efforts, but they will show up to protect federal agents conducting these operations if necessary. That’s why police showed up in Midvale Park, even though it turned out not to be an immigration operation.

“We have a legal obligation and some would say a philosophical obligation to assist other law enforcement,” Winsky said.

Kasmar said on the Buckmaster show: “The only reason TPD would be involved in that type of effort was if there was an emergency call for service. We’ve taken an oath, and if that happens, we’ll go out and try to restore peace. I assure you that probably will happen at some point, and I’ll probably have criticism on both sides.”

Indeed, one of the reasons there haven’t been many such flashpoints so far is that immigration agents have moved fast. By the time rapid-responders from Coalicion de Derechos Humanos arrive at scenes of immigration detentions, often the incident is over, Carrasco said.

For now, these activists are largely avoiding standing in the way of federal agents, taking the sort of stand that could lead to a clash with local police. But that could change.

“We cannot stand in the way, not right now,” Carrasco said. “Usually we try to respond and talk to people about their rights.”

“If we want to be in the middle, we need more people,” she said.

And if that happens, Tucson police, too, will be in the middle.

Photos: Protesters clash with TPD and security outside ICE facility. Graphic images.