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Most people living in Longmont today weren’t here in the summer of 1980 when racial tensions grew after a Longmont police officer shot and killed two 21-year-old Latino men.
Five young people were riding in a car on Main Street coming from a wedding. One passenger, a white man, shouted rude taunts at a police car. The police pulled them over and ordered the white man to get out. He did. Jeff Cordova and Juan Garcia stayed behind with their friend as the car holding the last man and a woman drove away.
The white man resisted arrest. Cordova and Garcia tried to intervene. Race probably had nothing to do with the incident to start, but when the dust settled the two bodies bleeding in the street were brown.
That year Longmont had less than 43,000 residents, about 4,000 of whom were Hispanic. The Hispanic community acted quickly to raise a voice for themselves, to prevent public anger from spinning out of control. They opened a dialog with the city council, the police, and the community, They called themselves simply El Comité — the committee. You may know some of their names: Vic Vela Sr., Dan Benavidez, Marta Moreno. They forged an alliance still essential to what Longmont is today. They averted further deaths.
In 2008, Mike Butler became Longmont’s chief of public safety, and the voice of El Comité was still speaking. Longmont’s police policies are now, I believe, some of the most progressive in the nation. The relationship between the public and the police in any city is strained at times. But Longmont works at it every day. Like a good marriage, continual work is what it takes.
My first encounter with Mike happened in 2017 when I was running for city council. That afternoon I learned a lot about Longmont’s progressive police policies. We talked about how you hire and train a police force that knows the use of force is a last resort. We talked about how you develop trust and cooperation between the police and the community. Mike said he’d show me, whether I got elected or not.
I was elected, and in spring of 2018 I walked a mostly Hispanic neighborhood in my ward with Mike and Dan, talking to whichever families were out in their front yards. Often Dan had to translate. But there we were, the chief of police, a founder of El Comité, and a newly-elected official, out on a Sunday morning visiting a yard sale and admiring a lovingly tended rose garden. (Dan, I still owe you two bucks from that yard sale.) We were forging our alliance, doing our best so our communities of color are not marginalized and not automatic targets for police violence.
Last year, Longmont designated the house where Jeff Cordova lived a historic landmark. And if Longmont hasn’t fully perfected its community police alliance, we’ve come a long way since Jeff Cordova and Juan Garcia died.
Now, just as cabin-fevered, quarantined Americans began to leave their homes again, George Floyd’s senseless death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has sparked protests all across the country. Police chiefs across the country have issued messages of solidarity with the protesters. The crowds at the protests are black and white and brown.
Under the sun, it has the ingredients of an El Comité moment. Then night falls, and the violence begins.
Violence is why I’m revisiting Longmont’s 40-year history of how a minority community, a public safety force and the privileged majority forged a lasting alliance of inclusion and equity.
After days of searching out many viewpoints on what’s happening in our cities, I have seen, heard, and read more different questions, more different answers, than I can express here. Police are deploying crowd control against peaceful protesters. Or black people are looting retail establishments. Or white people are breaking glass and setting fires and running away. There is evidence that some of the last are not allies at all, but subversive activists seeking to hijack the message from Black Lives Matter.
This is among the first massive civil rights movements covered by Facebook and Twitter. A white person smashing car windows has a different impact than a black person looting when you see it on Instagram. Twenty-five years ago, one bystander managed to capture a grainy video of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King. The term “went viral” had not been invented, but it happened. And when King’s assailants were acquitted, there were riots then, too. Today, there will be very little of this Black Lives Matter movement that will not be documented. Eventually, we will know it all. Now, it seems as if we see everything and know nothing.
Unsurprisingly, much of the social media chatter is about how to be a good ally in the movement if you’re white, if you’re privileged, if you need not fear becoming a victim. Not everyone must march. In this time, many cannot. But if you do, the message is simple. An ally is absolutely nonviolent. An ally does not take the lead on the message or actions. There are too many forces looking for an excuse to dismiss this movement and return to the awful status quo. Or use it as a reason to divide us. Don’t let it happen.
I don’t know how I would feel as a person of color. Maybe in that place, I would smash and burn and steal. So I neither judge nor justify those who have. But it has to stop if justice is to be served and if this senseless killing and the discrimination it signals is to end. Black Lives Matter is observing curfews and abjuring violence. It’s the right thing to do.
The police have a dilemma. Like any tight-knit group, their instinct is to protect their own. Is that instinct so strong that three of them stood paralyzed while Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd? Or did those men see no problem with what Chauvin was doing? Justice for black persons killed by excessive force means police will lose something. They will lose the security that the presumption that officers who kill are always justified gives them. I expect that some are angry about that, and others are ashamed they have it. How can we know?
Freddie Gray’s death resulted in no convictions. Michael Brown’s killer was exonerated twice. Now George Floyd’s medical examiner, according to Minneapolis CBS Station WCCO, reports “no physical findings of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation...Floyd likely died from a compilation of police restraint, underlying health conditions, and any potential intoxicants in his system.” Floyd’s family sought an independent autopsy that contradicts this.
To understand what is happening, each of us should try to walk in all three pairs of shoes: the person of color, the privileged white person, the police.
Our nation is having its “El Comité moment” but no nationwide guidance is available. The feds are unlikely to swoop in and reform any police department as they did in Ferguson and Baltimore — efforts that began under the Obama administration. This is a local problem and it must find a local solution. When Longmont had its crisis, violence was averted by quick and wise action by the community who was wronged. Non-violence won the day because the police and the city as a whole became allies in the effort to do better.
It may not be too late to step back from violence without giving up. The New York Times reported that America’s major corporations are jumping on the bandwagon, displaying the #blacklivesmatter hashtag on their social media accounts, and posting public statements of support. Netflix, Twitter, and Reebok are among them. They should endow a foundation instead of just talking, but it’s a start. These are firms whose business is to know where public opinion lies. Today it lies with justice, and we, like the founders of El Comité, must have the wisdom to seize the day.
As I write this, truly, I just received an email (sent to all the city council members) from the honorable Dan Benavidez himself. It was his expression of thanks to Mike Butler, who will be retiring this summer. He wrote, in the flamboyant style that reflects the energy he brings to all he does:
"NO DOUBT, absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that if other Police Chiefs in our country instead of just doing blah, blahs did what Chief Mike Butler did in walking down in the hoods every Sunday for years with the people assuring us that we do BELONG! we probably would not have the recurring Minneapolis type confrontations in our beloved country."
May this coincidence be an omen that together, we will get it done.
#blacklivesmatter
Note: My words, and my errors, are my own and don’t necessarily represent the opinion or policy of the City of Longmont
