Oakland officials defend handling of Ferguson protest

Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent answers questions from the press on Tuesday, the day after violent protests disrupted the city in the wake of the grand jury verdict in Ferguson, Mo. Oakland city officials spoke to the press about the local Ferguson protests overnight on Tuesday, November 25, 2014, at the Oakland, Calif, police headquarters. less Oakland Police Chief Sean Whent answers questions from the press on Tuesday, the day after violent protests disrupted the city in the wake of the grand jury verdict in Ferguson, Mo. Oakland city officials spoke ... more Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 152 Caption Close Oakland officials defend handling of Ferguson protest 1 / 152 Back to Gallery

Even as Oakland store owners cleaned up from another round of protest vandalism, city officials said the Police Department had prevented greater damage and disruption during a chaotic demonstration that lasted into the early hours of Tuesday.

Hundreds of demonstrators angered by the lack of criminal charges in the Ferguson, Mo., police shooting poured onto Interstate 580 Monday night, bringing traffic in both directions to a halt. Later, a smaller group looted downtown stores, including a Starbucks coffee shop and a Smart & Final grocery outlet, stealing bags of coffee, alcohol and dog food, police said.

Forty-three people were arrested on suspicion of crimes including assaulting officers, burglary, failure to disperse, resisting arrest, vandalism and public intoxication, officials said.

Mayor Jean Quan said police had scrambled to deal with protesters on several fronts after news spread that a grand jury in St. Louis County, Mo., had refused to indict a white Ferguson police officer in the Aug. 11 shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown.

Quan said the officers had shown “tremendous restraint’’ as protesters threw rocks and bottles at them. Three officers were injured, including one who suffered a concussion when he was hit in the face with a brick, authorities said. Police said they knew of no injuries among protesters.

Police made little effort to prevent protesters in a group of about 2,000 people from heading onto I-580 near Grand Avenue. They also largely stood by as the smaller group later looted the stores in the Old Oakland section of downtown, but then fired flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas when the group refused to disperse, authorities said.

“There is no perfect protest response,” said Police Chief Sean Whent. “It is always a delicate balance between overreacting and underreacting. I will say I think our officers exercised tremendous restraint.

“We made arrests where we could and where we could do it in a safe manner.”

Whent defended the decision not to try to block protesters from walking onto the freeway.

“We have prevented freeway walk-ons in the past,” he said, but on Monday night officers had numerous on- and off-ramps to defend.

“There were certainly more entrances and exits, and that spread us out pretty thin,” Whent said.

The chief said Oakland police initially mustered 300 officers for the protest, and didn’t call for help from other law enforcement agencies until the demonstration was under way.

“The decision to call mutual aid was made pretty early on, but it does take a fair amount of time for them (outside officers) to respond,” Whent said. “We had a significant number of police officers last night, but that was a very, very large crowd.”

He said that even if the first wave of 175 mutual-aid officers had already been in place, it might not have been enough to keep protesters off the freeway.

Quan agreed that police had handled the situation well.

“The Oakland Police Department has proved it can handle big demonstrations under very difficult circumstances,” she said. “There were more than a few times when Oakland police officers came under attack from bottles and rocks. I think there are a lot of peaceful protesters out there, and I’m going to ask them to not let that happen.”

Oakland police have long grappled with responding to riots. Disturbances erupted in 2010 after BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the killing of Oscar Grant, and again last year after a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin.

$4.5 milion lawsuit

In March, the city paid $4.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, who was struck on the head and nearly killed by a bean bag projectile fired by a city police officer during an Occupy protest in 2011.

City officials said the entire Police Department had recently gone through crowd control training. Whent said that one of the changes was in the department’s former reliance on tear gas.

Unlike in earlier protests, he said, officers fired only one canister of the chemical agent Monday night. Other agencies deployed tear gas several times, he said.

“I think that you can tell from our response last night compared to Occupy that it was significantly different,” Whent said. “We had minimal, minimal use of chemical agents, and it was used in a tactical manner to prevent assaults against our officers.”

He added: “We’ve provided a great deal of crowd control training to our officers over the last couple years, for both our line staff as well as for our commanders that are directing in the field. I think we've gotten significantly better at it.”

One of those protesting Monday night, 34-year-old Alex Petersburg, scoffed at Whent’s analysis.

“Their concept of what is good is to repress without exposing what is at the core of their agency — violence,” Petersburg said. “They beat people up but nobody died, so maybe that’s their idea of a good job.”

She added, “What the people did was impressive, and it should be a model for the rest of the country. We shut it down, we took the freeway.”

The latest outbreak of looting left shop owners frustrated Tuesday, more at the protesters than at police.

Support for protesters

K.C. Lutes, 32, and Mireya Albarran, 35, were opening Manifesta Salon at Ninth Street and Broadway after someone broke one of their windows overnight. Lutes said the small group of people who damaged her business were “taking advantage of the protest,” and that most of the demonstrators had been peaceful.

“We absolutely support and have solidarity with the protesters and their message of social justice and the right to protest,” Lutes said. “Our community is stronger than this small group of people who vandalized this neighborhood.”

Leora Barzell-Weber, a 52-year-old Oakland social worker, called the vandalism “a selfish act, not a moral act of protest.”

“If I was a business owner, why would I want to build in Oakland?” Barzell-Weber said.

Demonstrators broke several windows and scrawled graffiti on walls at the Marriott hotel on Broadway between 10th and 11th streets.

The Wells Fargo Bank on 12th and Broadway was open Tuesday, but had broken and cracked windows and a smashed front door. Across the street, Comerica Bank was closed with a smashed window.

Despite the looting, Smart & Final opened for business Tuesday, its floor still sticky from the liquid that spilled from broken bottles.

“Knowing the history of Oakland, I’m not surprised it happened at all,” said city resident Tamara Durley, 30, who was shopping at the grocery store.

She said she supported the protesters’ right to gather, but that when things get “out of hand and it starts damaging business and things of that nature, it’s not right.”

San Francisco Chronicle

staff writer Evan Sernoffsky contributed to this report.

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Vivian Ho and Hamed Aleaziz are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com, vho@sfchronicle.com, haleaziz@sfchronicle.com