Latinos Say Police Mishandled Protest

Local Latino leaders expressed anger and concern Friday about police handling of a demonstration that became violent outside Fullerton College on Thursday, but police and city officials said officers acted responsibly.

“If that had been an anti-abortion group nothing like that would have happened,” said Art Montes, a spokesman for the local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “The message the police are sending to the community is that peaceful demonstrations will be dealt with pepper spray in the face.”

More than 20 students suffered slight injuries when Fullerton police, aided by officers from several neighboring cities, used pepper spray and arrested six people, ending a rally and march of about 300 students who were demanding more Chicano studies in schools.

Although the demand for greater ethnic studies and more minority hires has grown louder in recent months on college campuses, Thursday’s protest was one of the most dramatic displays of concern among high school students.

Orange County high school educators acknowledged Friday that they have failed to develop faculties that reflect the county’s increasingly diverse student bodies. The greatest obstacles to their diversity efforts, they said, are the limited number of qualified bilingual and minority teachers and an intense competition for those people.

Thursday’s incident occurred when several hundred students, most from Anaheim High and Sonora High in La Habra, left their campuses and walked toward Fullerton College, where a Mexican Independence Day rally was under way.

Students at the rally went to meet them, and the groups converged on Lemon Street, tying up traffic and reportedly ignoring officers’ repeated orders to disperse. Police used pepper spray, which is similar to tear gas, when some students began yelling and threatening the officers who were arresting people.

Seferino Garcia, a community activist, said the decision to march to meet the arriving high school students was spontaneous and the “students were caught by surprise by the police. They didn’t know they were doing anything wrong.”

Grace Ruiz, 15, a high school student from Anaheim who was hit during the demonstration, said the police overreacted. “The police didn’t need to hit us with their batons or spray us with pepper spray,” she said.

Police officials denied that officers struck anyone with batons and defended their handling of the incident, saying that they moved in because demonstrators risked injury to themselves and to others when they marched down the street.

“No batons were used” to strike demonstrators, said Sylvia Palmer Mudrick, a Fullerton Police Department spokeswoman. “Certainly our officers had their batons, and at the time when they were trying to clear the streets they may have used the batons to push people back. But allegations that people were beaten, we don’t have that information.”

Police said Friday that they were continuing an internal investigation into the melee, which is standard procedure after major incidents.

Times staff writer Matt Lait and special correspondent Willson Cummer contributed to this report.