(Editor’s Note: Mill Valley City Manager Todd Cusimano addressed the City Council regarding the incident on Nov. 5 involving an out of control party with 100 to 200 juveniles. More detail can be found at MarinLocalNews.com. Below is a partial transcript of his comments.)
Words matter, actions matter. When you make analysis statements or start to think it’s okay to disrespect law enforcement and Public Safety – it’s dangerous.
Why do I say that? Well, we [recently] had a really bad incident. It was a felony assault against a teacher at Redwood High School a couple of weeks ago. It was on social media. Some of you may have seen that?
You’ve had this conversation with eBikes where when we detain juveniles and take action against them, I can tell you more than 50% of the time the first thing out of a parent’s mouth is, “Why did you detain my child?”
That’s the first question out of their mouth, and that’s a problem.
So, on Saturday night we had an incident over on Ashford. We got a call from some residents of a large party of approximately 100 to 200 juveniles drinking and yelling profanities. It seemed like there were fights going on, and they thought they heard either gunfire or fireworks. Two to three officers respond on this call. That’s who we had working that night.
Officers were engaged immediately by 100 to 200 and juveniles in the street. They’re going from Ashford over to the CVS parking lot.
In the initial call, what the officers figured out quickly was that this was a Social Host Ordinance type of call. (With a) Social Host, you know the parents were away on vacation or out of the area, their children were home alone and they threw a party.
So that’s the first message..
Once we get there, we’re trained to disperse everyone safely but you also want to identify and make sure someone doesn’t get into a car intoxicated.
You have two to three officers right away trying to evaluate that, with one to two hundred kids running down the street. Quickly they engaged a couple that were intoxicated or in possession of alcohol. They detained them, one (was detained) on site and one was brought back to the station to be released to the parents.
In the area of CVS you add another driver who was doing donuts and driving really recklessly in the parking lot. He was detained and cited for driving inappropriately, and we had a call for mutual aid out. Once our mutual aid officers got there – again just a handful of officers trying to make sure everyone’s safe. Making sure again that we don’t have looting like we did at the 7-Eleven from a large group of kids after the Tam High homecoming dance.
Police officers are trying to safely navigate, recognizing these are youth, keeping everybody safe, but trying to do it the right way – what they’re trained to do. All this is on video on multiple cameras.
Also at the same time, you have the kids videoing our officers, yelling profanities, trying to instigate them. You’ve probably seen it on social media. Already, I’ve seen a number posted. (Juveniles) engaged our officers saying: “What’s your badge number? Why are you here? Let them go.” (Juveniles were) really in their face, taking an aggressive stance with our officers.
It was shocking to me that that was going on.
Some outside agencies arrived. What happened then was that those officers were immediately engaged by some juveniles. They were jumping on the cars of law enforcement, they were throwing things at law enforcement. One officer was hit in the head by a beer can and was injured.
Again, this went on for far too long.
Ultimately we were able to get control of the situation. How we got control of the situation is that we basically had to pull all law enforcement from San Rafael all the way to Southern Marin to move the youth out of our area safely and make sure things weren’t vandalized and no one else was hurt.
So that happened on Saturday. On Sunday and Monday I’ve heard a number of things from community members. Look, we all have to own our piece.
I think it starts in the home, and my message starts there. We own our responsibility, of our team, and we’re happy to tell our story.
I’ve heard a few things that I just want to share and have it on the record.
There were some comments saying, “Hey, these are rich white kids and you only arrested or cited them. You didn’t do anything.”
Or, “You only cited one or two of them. Just because they live in Mill Valley and you show deference to them.”
That’s absolutely not true. The answer – the reason why three were cited from the scene – was because we had a handful of officers and almost 200 people running around in the streets. Some were attacking our officers. These are the facts of a situation.
My message to the community, and all those that were there, and those that did assault officers, and those that did throw that beer can: we’re coming and we’re investigating.
We’re going to use every law enforcement avenue available to us within this County. We’re looking at the videos right now. We have videos of that incident. We’re working with the schools and the families to bring those individuals forward and hold them accountable and responsible.
What I’ll tell the Council and the community is that there will be more arrests moving forward.
But again, where do we need to be? It’s a public conversation of understanding the role of our staff and our City staff, of how we operate, and we hold ourselves accountable. But also holding everyone else accountable and having some difficult conversations. And I think that’s where we’re headed. It’s not in the Council Chamber. It’s in a public setting.
I just want to thank Stephanie Young from Heart of the Village and her team of parents. Let’s start having these workshops, these working groups and using some of these other examples of how we can be better as Mill Valley.
I appreciate that, and I think that’s where this needs to go. Something else I’m considering doing because I just think there’s just a lot of supposed expertise in our community and strong opinions and feelings. I think people want to have a public dialogue and so I’m going to give it to them. I’m going to start with [a City Manager’s] working group because I want to start there. I want to start with some best practices. [Asking] where am I falling short? Let’s fill those holes and then let’s carry that small conversation of a working group of 12 to 15 people with City staff and our community and let’s move that forward.
We envision a couple meetings a month of just being in a room and just having conversations instead of talking “at” each other. I think that’s where it’s headed. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t, and it’s not defending our staff. We’re public servants, that’s what we get paid for. But I am not going to have my team, someone else telling their story, and putting them in harm’s way, and then critiquing them after with information that [is] false. It’s not okay. It’s just not okay.
I’m upset about it and I’m going to engage quickly. It’s a priority for me. Again I just want to tell the Council we have looked at those video cameras and the response of our staff. I have 21 years in law enforcement. I’m really proud of how they handled themselves. I’m embarrassed for our City, for the officers that came into it and what they had to endure. That’s on us and so we’re going to fix that.”
I have the utmost respect for MVPD Chief Navarro and his Officers doing a very difficult often “no win” job. As a counselor at juvenile hall for 14 years I know exactly the kind of situation and behavior described here by the Chief. In my experience, events like these are always the result of parents not being responsible for their kids then screaming police brutality when things go south.
Agreed. What’s more dangerous however, are the deputies themselves. At minimum they should be required to take classes learning respect and compassion for those arrested. They lack respect and are often combative with arrests. ,compassion and dignity. The community at large are concerned for this behavior as well. There is certainly no community between the sheriff’s department and the public. This is a tragedy.
First – MV needs a City Manager – Mayor – Chief of police – and City Council with some backbone. Call it what it is ‘ assault on officers ‘ – you have the capabilities of getting 50 officers there in 20 minutes – arresting as many as possible and with cameras pick up the rest tomorrow. Shameless a cop who has their hands tied and the kids laugh and the bloated government COWERS !
Milk Valley officers like Tiburon , do a great job at trying to manage very disrespectful residents and juveniles so sad to see for decades. Thank you to Mill Valley PD and Tiburon for decades for trying to manage insanity of generations of disrespect and Tiburon PD seems harder every year. We are very sorry to see residents and younger residents abuse those who protect our communities. As a Catholic school secondary teacher and Jesuit educated resident in Marin foe decades , it is shocking always to see and hear ongoing disrespect as we continue to see . What is best it seems is to have ongoing community meetings and local youth leaders conduct these meeting to openly address all our younger generations really undermining community standards of respectful conduct.
Thanks for sharing this information. You did the best you could to bring things under control. Some of those are so disrespectful…when you say something, it’s blamed on the pandemic. Sorry I have no sympathy over bad behavior. It starts in the home and it’s sickening. May these Gods grow in wisdom so they can be better citizens of our society. Kudos to those officers that were involved. S
The police are not more dangerous than suspects that scream profanities, throw cans and bottles, and mob the officers. There is no way to politely arrest an aggressive, possibly drunk, person physically challenging a police officer. Show respect for the officers if you expect respect in return.
Outrageous behavior! The parents should be beyond ashamed! My sisters are both teachers and they say the biggest problem they deal with now are the parents. Parents threatening to sue, if they dare suggest that their child is misbehaving in class.
Everyone of those kids and parents should be making a public apology and at the very least, do community service.