Photo by Gustavo ArellanoPolice raids on punk concerts are nothing new; hell, Black Flag made a career out of them. So concertgoers attending a Jan. 25 political prisoners' benefit show at Anaheim's Unitarian-Universalist Church weren't surprised that the city's finest scoped out the venue hours before a 7 p.m. show to benefit political prisoners. They didn't flinch when eight cop cars—some with barking police dogs ready to chomp into anarchist ass—cruised into the nearby Benjamin Franklin Elementary School parking lot. Event organizers even waved hello to the three officers spying from behind shrubbery across the street at Anaheim Police Department headquarters.
Actually, the slow-motion raid began the day before, according to Ruth Shapin, a Santa Ana attorney who serves on the church's seven-member board. That's when she fielded three phone messages from Anaheim Sergeant Thomas Geary “strongly suggesting” the show not go on.
“He kept telling us that the group holding the event caused trouble and that they would tear up the building and the surrounding neighborhoods,” recalls Shapin.
In fact, the group coordinating the show was the Orange County Revolutionary Collective (OCRC), which has held several previous punk concerts at the same church without problems. But Shapin says Geary's apocalyptic forecast of rampaging anarchists and not-so-subtle pressuring spooked her and the board. “So we told him we would call it off,” she said.
Shapin then contacted fellow church member Duane Roberts. Roberts, a longtime Anaheim activist, figured more than mere concern for the facility motivated Geary's call to pull the plug on a concert that was co-sponsored by the Anarchist Black Cross Federation.
“The police didn't like the politics of the sponsors,” Roberts alleged. “Once they saw the word 'anarchist' attached to the event, and some of the bands, such as Over the Counter Intelligence and Cuauhtémoc, they probably had visions of youth destroying property. I'll tell you this much: [the police] wouldn't have had a problem if we had a Dixieland band serenading the Kiwanis Club.”
The church board decided to reverse its previous decision on the grounds that canceling the show would be tantamount to endorsing censorship.
“Although [the church] doesn't necessarily agree with anarchist beliefs,” Shapin says, “we do feel that they have a right to express their views. This was a First Amendment issue.”
But just to make sure there would be no problems, Roberts devised a plan. Geary had told Shapin the church could hold only 50 people in the church at any time without violating the building's conditional use permit. To circumnavigate this restriction, organizers decided bands would perform in the church lobby, and the audience would gather in the parking lot. They proposed this idea to the police department Saturday afternoon; the police approved. The concert was on again.
But the police approval was apparently granted without Geary's knowledge. Roberts claims Geary went ballistic when he found out about the renewal of the event. (The Anaheim Police Department declined the Weekly's request to comment.)
Thus, the massive Geary-led police presence before the show's start.
Organizers and concertgoers claim Geary harassed them throughout the night, at one point taping off a church-leased parking lot to discourage anyone from entering. Alarmed at the escalating repression, church member Artie Castillo took action.
“I didn't want anything to happen, so I called Geary's superior,” Castillo says. “After that, Geary backed off.”
Or so it seemed. Shapin herself opened the event with a particularly relevant “This Land Is Your Land” for the young crowd. But a code-enforcement officer soon arrived and deemed the concert illegal. He claimed that the event was for entertainment purposes and the church didn't have a permit for that.
Geary and his platoon lined up in riot formation after the code enforcer's proclamation, ready to confront an unruly mob. But the 70-plus attendees accepted the decree, marched across the street to the police station, and filled out 70 complaint forms accusing Geary of intimidation and unconstitutionally shutting down the concert.
The church board is currently deliberating what, if any, legal recourse they'll take against the police department. “We want good relations with the police department,” Shapin stresses. “But the event shouldn't have been shut down. It was a political event, and they didn't seem to like that.”
Roberts has already received assurances from Mayor Curt Pringle and Councilman Richard Chavez that they're going to launch an investigation into Geary's actions. Roberts does see an upside to this ordeal. “The police were surprised so many people came to the police station in a disciplined matter,” Roberts says. “They're not accustomed to people standing up to them when they use the type of intimidation tactics they did. Maybe they'll hesitate next time they try to raid a political show.”
