The City of San Jose asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit charging that the city’s police had put a group of Donald Trump supporters in danger last year. Instead, the Trump supporters’ lawsuit was given the green light to go ahead.
Despite dismissing claims against San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia, on March 15 federal Judge Lucy Koh refused to toss the lawsuit against the city and several individual police officers, KCBS reported.
The lawsuit filed by fourteen Trump supporters in July centers on claims that the San Jose police led them straight into a mob of violent anti-Trump protesters following a Trump rally in June of 2016. The lawsuit also charges that police stood by and did nothing as the liberal mob physically attacked the Trump supporters.
“We’ve seen video appearing on international local and national media that shows the police standing by as people were getting gruesomely attacked,” said California Log Cabin Republicans representative Charles Moran.
As Breitbart News reported last year, a 14-year-old girl was reportedly assaulted by two people and was then allegedly denied assistance by the San Jose Fire Department. In another case, a 71-year-old woman is described as having had her glasses ripped off and crushed. The suit alleges that police who witnessed the incident refused to arrest the culprit.
At the time, California Republican Party Vice Chair Harmeet Dhillon, who is representing the group, released a statement saying, “The plaintiffs allege violations of the class’s constitutional rights, including the rights to free speech, peaceful assembly, and due process, as well as various other statutory and common law, claims. Hernandez et al. v. City of San Jose et al., Case No. 5:16-cv-03957-LHK (N.D.C.A. July 14, 2016).”
Immediately after the attacks, Breitbart News reported that several journalists and Trump supporters complained that the San Jose police did little to stop the violence. Still, after the first melees, police did finally move the protest several blocks away.
The city’s attorney, Rick Doyle, said the police did nothing wrong and had their hands full trying to keep order that day.
Additionally, when the lawsuit was filed, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a Hillary Clinton supporter, denounced the claims that his police were ordered to stand down. In June, Liccardo even blamed Trump for the violence.
But Dhillon slammed the mayor for “blaming the victim.” She told Breitbart:
San Jose’s Mayor compounded the enflamed situation by effectively blaming the victims for attending an event sponsored by a politician the Mayor disagrees with, which he made clear in his public statement following the riots. Victims waited for weeks to see if the city would take action aggressively to prosecute the offenders, but to date, the City has failed to hold the rioters and their organizers fully accountable for the violence and the threats chilling the free speech and association rights of the victims.
Ultimately, since Judge Koh did not dismiss the case, it is clear she felt that if some of the facts alleged by the plaintiffs turn out to be true, the law will likely be on their side.
The next stop for the city is to appeal the case to the Ninth Circuit Court.
It was also in San Jose where a hate-filled anti-Trump crowd physically attacked Rachel Casey while police stood by doing nothing. In October, Casey told Breitbart News that she feared being beaten by the anti-Trump mob. “I just knew if I touched one of them I would get hurt. Luckily someone let me in that hotel. Finally, someone finally opened the door,” Casey said.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.