Just over a year after the Yolo County District Attorney’s office filed 21 misdemeanor charges against twelve protesters, accused of conducting a protest in front of the US Bank in UC Davis’ Memorial Union which allegedly interrupted business to the point where US Bank made the decision to close its doors, attorneys for the twelve individuals and Deputy District Attorney Michael Cabral reached a plea agreement.
The agreement called for the protesters to plead to a single infraction of disturbing the peace. The rest of the charges except for count 1, the conspiracy, would be dropped. The protesters would face a fine and have to serve 80 hours of community service. Neither UC Davis nor US Bank are pursuing restitution.
Attorney Alexis Briggs, one of several who worked on the case, said, “Given the nature of the political activity, community service is a very appropriate resolution.”
“If individuals were engaging in the conduct alleged, the appropriate law enforcement response would have been to identify individuals acting outside the bounds of the first amendment and issue citations on the scene for them to later appear in court,” Ms. Briggs told the Vanguard in a phone interview on Monday afternoon following the plea agreement. “I think ultimately it was appropriate to resolve it for an infraction.”
The resolution allows the court system to avoid what would have been two separate six-week trials. As the Vanguard reported last spring, the original offer from the District Attorney’s office was for a misdemeanor with 80 hours of community service.
It was early March 2002 when the U.S. Bank officials told UC Davis that it was terminating its agreements with the campus. In a March 1 letter to the Board of Regents, the bank stated its reason as the interference by protesters who had intermittently blocked the door to the bank branch in the Memorial Union since January.
U.S. Bank employees “were effectively imprisoned in the branch,” bank Senior Vice President Daniel Hoke said in his March 1 letter. He noted that employees felt they needed to call campus police to escort them from the branch.
The plea agreement calls for no restitution to be required of the students.
“We did receive a statement from US Bank early on, quite a few months ago, that they would not be seeking any restitution,” Ms. Briggs said, noting that UC Davis also sent out a public statement that they would not be seeking restitution either. “Those were the two big hurdles to an early resolution at the misdemeanor level.”
However, Ms. Briggs noted, “A misdemeanor is a much more serious conviction than an infraction.”
A misdemeanor would have had the possibility of harming the future employability and careers of the young protesters, while an infraction acts much like a traffic ticket.
The university put out a statement through spokesperson Claudia Morain of the UC Davis News Service, “We appreciate the hard work of the Yolo County DA’s office on this case.”
They had no further comment.
Last May, Barry Shiller, working as the university’s spokesperson, told the Vanguard, “The last thing in the world you want to see is 11 students and a faculty member facing charges – even misdemeanors – that reportedly could be resolved through community service and no jail time.”
He added, “It’s vital to remember that the charges were filed only after campus police received multiple complaints from students and others alleging that they had been prevented from entering or leaving the campus U.S. Bank branch. And the blockades continued despite 12 attempts – six in writing – by campus staff to educate protesters about the risks of continuing their actions.”
Given the magnitude of the professed losses by the bank and university due to the student’s actions, one might be surprised that neither entity is seeking restitution.
“My understanding is that there was a financial settlement by UC Davis to US Bank and it’s my belief that’s the reason that US Bank wasn’t seeking any restitution against the individual defendants,” Ms. Briggs said, noting that there might be doubts as to whether the individuals could be identified as being responsible for actions that led to the closure.
She added that one of the problems that U.S. Bank may have identified was the failure of the university to properly handle protests.
The Vanguard acquired a copy of the settlement agreement between U.S. Bank and the Regents of the University of California. The agreement was entered into following mediation that occurred on June 21, 2012 that resulted in an agreement by the Regents to pay U.S. Bank $225,000.
“Apparently law enforcement either do absolutely nothing whatsoever including asking for identification and issuing citations for allegedly unlawful activity, or they pepper spray people,” Alexis Briggs told the Vanguard. “There appears to be no place in the middle.”
She went on to suggest that this was a situation where merely issuing a citation without any force might have ended the protest. That assertion by Ms. Briggs was backed up by several protesters who told the Vanguard that early on they decided that if they were issued citations for their conduct, given the financial burden such infractions would carry, they would have ended the protest after the first issuance.
In a press release from the protesters, they described their actions as: “Numerous protestors peacefully blockaded the campus offices of US Bank.”
As a result of these actions, “the branch shuttered its doors and abandoned the sweetheart deal through which it purchased captive customers from the university.”
Twelve individuals, they said, “were selected arbitrarily for the hyperbolic charges. Evidence gathered via subpoena now shows a national network of high-priced attorneys, public relations executives, security professionals, and corporate administrators deployed, not to protect bank or university community, but to exact as much punishment as possible. In the end, the UC administration, the bank, and the DA did not get their wish.”
The protesters argued that “the prosecution was largely driven by the university’s top administrators who, despite having high-salaried in-house counsel, elected to spend considerable public money on private attorneys.”
“One upscale San Francisco firm was retained solely to avoid exposure of any internal documents regarding UCD’s relations with the bank, and to conceal the administration’s dossiers on students, staff, and faculty,” they write. “Like the DA and police, the university seemed motivated by the need to send a message regarding the risks of protest – a message sometimes written in pepper spray.”
To understand the university’s actions and perspective, one must recognize that the bank protests began just over two months after the pepper spray incident that embarrassed the university, and their sole goal seemed to be to avoid a scene where the students would be arrested in large numbers and escorted during the middle of the day through the campus.
As Barry Shiller explained last March, “The demonstrations in front of the bank began in early January. The protesters’ pattern shifted from simply congregating in front of the bank’s entrance while allowing customers and employees to enter and exit freely, to actively obstructing people from entering and exiting.”
He noted, “This occurred daily from mid-January through late February.”
“Campus representatives tried daily for nearly two months to engage these individuals, both to understand their motives and try to reach some common ground. Over the ensuing weeks, notices were posted and handed out, explaining the potential legal consequences of blocking the bank entrance,” he stated. “This, too, had no discernible effect. The Yolo County District Attorney was subsequently asked to review the matter, and has now issued the misdemeanor complaints.”
And so, from the university’s perspective, their goal was to handle the matter without an incident. If that meant the bank would leave, if that meant they would have to pay out a cash settlement of $225,000, it was the price to pay to prevent another November 18-type incident.
The District Attorney’s office, through the plea agreement, dropped all other remaining charges except for count 1, the conspiracy charge. That charge is now deferred.
As Alexis Briggs explained, the charge remains in place in order for the court to have the leverage to ensure that the protesters complete their community service.
“Once proof of completion of the community service is provided… that charge will also be dismissed,” she said.
The protesters are not in any way prevented from engaging in normal free speech – First Amendment activities.
“There is no stay away orders, there’s nothing restricting their otherwise lawful conduct,” she told the Vanguard. “They’re not on probation. They’re not on any form of supervision.”
The end result, the protesters said, was “no convictions, no bureaucratic revenge, and no bank.”
“The absurd case is now history,” they wrote. “The questions of the university’s increasing entanglement with finance; the catastrophe of student debt; and the systematically brutal, excessive, and wasteful criminalization of protest remain very much of the moment.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Good news, great report ~
A very appropriate disposition, and one offered and accepted in any case i have had like it.
i miss the banter of Elaine and octane at times like this. also just saying is being uncharacterstically quiet,
Its about time why this took a year to settle is beyond me.
I wonder what the protesters think about the one employee who lost their job. US Bank offered everyone a job elsewhere but one person, who was also a student, was unable to transfer and had to quit. Sort of a they came for Babylon but only got the shepherd kind of story.