A discussion about alleged incidents involving corruption of the San Jose State University Police Department was held by some SJSU community members who advocated for abolishing armed police officers on campus.
The event was hosted on Zoom by the California Faculty Association’s (CFA) Anti-Racism Social Justice Transformation Committee on Wednesday
The CFA is a union including 29,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches who are employed by the California State University system, according to its website.
“CFA demands that the CSU divest from its relations with public institutions throughout the state, defund campus police, remove armed police from our campuses and join CFA in exploring community-based strategies as alternatives to policing that are based in community accountability and transformative justice,” said Sang Kil a justice studies associate professor.
Kil was an event organizer and said it was organized in response to the California Faculty Association’s (CFA) demands for the California State University system.
She presented incidents of alleged police corruption and opened the floor to Denise Johnson and Laurie Valdez who spoke about the deaths, police investigations and racial injustices involving their loved ones.
Denise Johnson is the mother of the late Gregory Johnson Jr., a 20-year-old student and Sigma Chi fraternity member who was found dead in the basement of the fraternity house on Nov. 22, 2008. The UPD and the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner's Office ruled the case a suicide, according to the coroner’s office autopsy report.
Denise Johnson has gained community support and demanded justice for her son since his death, calling the case a murder and a hate crime. In a slide show, Denise Johnson detailed a timeline of the investigation and said she’s “hit a wall of lies [from the university and the UPD] from day one.”
SJSU President Mary Papazian stated in a Feb. 18 campuswide email that although no new evidence has surfaced since 2009, the county coroner’s office and the county district attorney’s office will re-examine the case after the pandemic eases.
Valdez presented a timeline of Antonio Guzman Lopez’s 2014 death. She was the partner of Lopez, a 38-year-old man who was shot by UPD Sgt. Mike Santos and Officer Frits Van der Hoek after they responded to a report of a man carrying a knife near campus.
Lopez’s case was independently investigated by the Santa Clara County and San Mateo County District Attorney’s offices and was deemed legally justifiable “in response to an immediate threat” that could “result in great harm or death,” according to a university statement from previous Spartan Daily reporting in a March 11, 2019 article.
However, Lopez’s family brought claims against Santos and Van der Hoek for unreasonable search and seizure, violation of due process and wrongful death and negligence, according to the 2016 CSU Board of Trustees Annual Litigation Report.
Denise Johnson and Valdez were joined by multiple staff, faculty and student speakers at the event who shared frustration over the handling of these two cases by SJSU and UPD.
About 70 participants attended the event that was sponsored by the departments of African American studies and Chicana and Chicano studies.
Lana Gomez, an SJSU senior and vice president of the student-run group Students for Gregory Johnson, said the group’s previous efforts to discuss campus police reform with UPD during an October forum was ineffective.
“I asked the [UPD] officers more questions about their de-escalation tactics and with every question I asked, I was given no direct answer and was told to refer to their website,” Gomez said during the event. “I did not walk away from that police forum with my questions answered and no accountability was taken . . . I strongly believe that we need police officers off our school campuses.”
In support of CFA demands, Kil said all 23 CSU campuses need to redirect resources university’s spend on campus police to Black and ethnic studies, hire Black faculty and endorse California Senate Constitutional Amendment No. 5, which would abolish Proposition 209.
The proposition passed in 1996 and prohibits state and local government affirmative action programs in public employment and public education from considering race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, according to Ballotpedia.
Its repeal was proposed in the 2020 California elections through Proposition 16 but 57% of California residents voted no and about 56% of Santa Clara County residents casted that same vote.
Kil said there’s a “rising tide of hate here at San Jose State University” and in our greater community and only the intersectionality between race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, disability and citizenship can fight white supremacy and resist hate and violence.
“The CSU says it welcomes Black students yet on each CSU campus, armed police exist, many highly militarized by virtue of the clothing, equipment, weapons and culture we witness,” Kil said. “The police represent a real threat to Black lives.”
Tiffany Yep, a member of the group Students for Justice for Gregory Johnson, gave a slideshow presentation on the campus police budget. She said student tuition is allocated to the UPD and more specifically, UPD salaries.
Kenneth Mashinchi, SJSU senior director of strategic communications and media relations, confirmed in a Wednesday email the UPD is 50% funded by tuition and because the UPD budget is mainly salary and benefits, it primarily goes to those areas.
He said the UPD also receives state funding and its budget makes up 1% of the campus budget as a whole.
Emma Hollenbeck, member of the student-run group Students for Police Accountability and Gomez said UPD funds should be reallocated to students and faculty, but also to hire more counselors instead of heavily armed police officers.
