Students Crossed the Line, Prosecutors Say

Two students in favor of affirmative action lost their right to protest when they threw chunks of concrete at police and attacked a mounted officer during a raucous demonstration at Cal State Northridge last year, prosecutors told jurors Monday.

The two students, 23-year-old Sergio Gutierrez and 21-year-old Edward Vasquez, face up to a year in jail if convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in the trial that began Monday in Van Nuys Municipal Court.

Each defendant has denied the allegations.

On the first day of testimony, prosecutors relied on a videotape and police accounts of the melee outside a 1996 debate between ex-Klansman David Duke and civil rights leader Joe Hicks.

Los Angeles Police Department officers allege that Vasquez threw rocks while Gutierrez tried to grab the reins from a mounted police officer trying to disperse the crowd.

“In a normal situation it wouldn’t have gone to trial,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert J. Fratianne told jurors.

“But pieces of concrete were thrown at officers and it struck two of them in the head. Luckily they were wearing their helmets. That’s why it’s a serious case. And when any type of disturbance turns violent, that’s where we draw the line.”

Defense lawyer Meir J. Westreich did not give an opening statement, but suggested in an interview that authorities may have been concerned about other things.

“Why is it so important for the police to convict these guys?” said Westreich. “Is it because police are trying to protect themselves in case a civil suit is filed?”

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The Sept. 25, 1996, CSUN debate featuring Duke and Hicks brought national attention to the measure against affirmative action known as Proposition 209.

But while a tepid discussion went on inside the Student Union, outside bricks and rocks were hurled and police donned riot gear during a protest that harked back to the student antiwar protests of the 1960s and ‘70s.

CSUN student government leaders later said the incident left their campus divided, with many students angry over the attention that resulted from the debate. Proposition 209 was approved by voters in the November election.

A spokesman for CSUN referred questions to the campus police. CSUN Police Lt. Mike Sugar said officers at the campus had been ordered off the main lines of the protest by the LAPD before the alleged incidents took place. Sugar declined to comment further.

Lt. Peter Durham, the LAPD commanding officer in charge during the melee, testified that he ordered his officers from the Metro Division to take over for CSUN campus police when he saw students in the crowd grabbing for officer batons.

“There had been an indication earlier in the week that the demonstration might become destructive,” he testified.

But in interviews, Gutierrez, a Mission College student, and Vasquez, a junior at UC Berkeley, said they want to prove they were unjustly abused by police officers.

Vasquez, a soft-spoken Latin American Studies major, is keeping up with his schoolwork while living at a local apartment he rented for the trial, which is expected to last about three weeks. The Hollister native said the trial is worthwhile because it is for a cause that he believes in.

“As a Latino, I think it is in my best interest to make sure affirmative action stays around,” Vasquez said in an interview Sunday. “We should make sure that cops aren’t allowed to brutalize us. To me this case is bigger than us, it’s about fighting for affirmative action throughout the state.”

Vasquez drove to CSUN last September with dozens of students from a group called Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary.

They were criticized by some CSUN students and police as being outside agitators who stirred up the melee with confrontational protesting tactics.

On Monday, some of the same students from the By Any Means Necessary group staged an early-morning protest in front of the courthouse. About 10 students came down from the Bay Area to support Vasquez and Gutierrez.

“We want the charges dropped,” said Julio Cruz, a 20-year-old student from UC Berkeley. “What happened that day was a police riot. We were just demonstrating to defend affirmative action.”

Westreich said his client acted in the best traditions of campus protest.

“There is a centuries-old tradition where students clash with public authorities on political issues,” he said. “You can go back to medieval times. It’s a normal part of a functioning, free society that universities are places of fermentation and therefore young people will sometimes challenge the status quo.”

Four other students arrested that day were convicted of minor charges and placed on probation, authorities said.