If we don’t object, we lose

On the other hand, the county recently declaring a safety emergency and curfew seems like a dangerous abuse of power to me.

It is important we all understand what just happened here. For two nights, all people (with few exceptions) everywhere in the county were prohibited from leaving their homes. The justification was to maintain the health and safety of residents and prevent property damage and looting due to a public safety emergency. There are two aspects to this: the emergency used as justification and the curfew itself.

The rationale for a public safety emergency is weak. Prior to the declaration, there was no evidence of civil unrest in San Mateo County. There had been mob lawlessness and looting in other parts of the Bay Area, but not here. The declaration was actually “in anticipation” of “conditions of extreme peril.” In the June 4 Daily Journal story “Threats of violence, looting prompted curfew” County Manager Mike Callagy said outside gangs would try to incite violence and looting in conjunction with a planned protest. Callagy said the source of this concern was social media posts and other investigations. This is where I think the rationale for a safety emergency really breaks down.

We know social media can be manipulated to generate fear, confusion and division and that it’s difficult to trace bogus social media posts back to their real source. Like many, I saw a posting about a “San Mateo Looting Night” and wondered if I was being trolled. It turns out that the FBI knows foreign entities sent this post and others, according to Menlo Park Police Chief Dave Bertini. Using social media to justify an impending emergency is a very big leap. In the absence of corroborating information, social media is simply not credible. The other investigations Callagy mentioned might provide this corroboration, but we don’t know because “other investigations” is simply too vague. The legitimacy of this emergency declaration rests on the details. I think, at the very least, Callagy owes us the specific information he used in making this decision so we can agree it was legitimate.

The rationale for the curfew itself is also highly questionable. Callagy said other cities and counties establishing curfews contributed to his decision, but those jurisdictions all have different circumstances — some similar, but many not, to San Mateo County. A neighboring county’s curfew doesn’t make it necessarily correct here. He said the curfew was necessary to provide relief to local police departments stretched thin by riots and protests across the region, but the constitutional right of peaceable assembly is not dependent on the resources of government. Accepting that it is sets a dangerous precedent. Finally, Callagy wanted to assure protesters the curfew was not an effort by local law enforcement agencies to stem their ability to gather or demonstrate, yet this is precisely what the curfew accomplished. Whether the curfew was enforced or not, merely declaring it made it illegal for people to peacefully assemble at night.

While Callagy said the curfew was intended for officers to handle potential violence associated with protests, those took place in small areas of the county and the curfew was geographically countywide. There is no reason why the freedom of a Half Moon Bay resident should be restricted due to what might (or might not) happen in Redwood City. Fortunately, the San Mateo County Code of Ordinances agrees. Section 2.46.070 states a curfew may be declared “limited to the area(s) wherein the emergency conditions have been proclaimed to exist.” When this was paraphrased in the curfew proclamation, the critical “limited to” was omitted. The curfew was an intentionally disproportionate and unnecessarily broad response to what Callagy called specific threats and it may have violated our local law.

You might be asking yourself, does objecting to the curfew really matter? It was only two nights and now it’s over. Yes, it matters a lot. Our right to peaceful assembly is part of the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is not something given to or taken from us by a well-meaning government official like Mr. Callagy. This is why I respect, but disagree with, those who object to the health order that also restricts peaceful assembly.

If we don’t object when our rights are taken from us without proper justification, we are basically saying we don’t care about those rights. Then the next government official will feel free curtail our freedom again (and again). Then, we don’t have those rights anymore. If we don’t object, we lose.

Mark Eliot has lived in the city of San Mateo for 28 years.