An undercover California Highway Patrol officer who was attempting to infiltrate a demonstration against police brutality in Oakland pulled a gun on the protesters after he and his partner were outed and the partner was attacked
The undercover work — captured by a freelance photographer working for The Chronicle — raised questions about tactics employed by police and protesters as authorities seek to get a handle on rallies that have flooded the streets of Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco, at times shutting down freeways and devolving into vandalism and looting.
About 50 people were marching near Lake Merritt just after 11:30 p.m. Wednesday when some of the demonstrators began calling out two men who were walking with the group, said the freelance photographer, Michael Short.
“Just as we turned up 27th Street, the crowd started yelling at these two guys, saying they were undercover cops,” Short said Thursday. “Somebody snatched a hat off the shorter guy’s head and he was fumbling around for it. A guy ran up behind him, knocked him down on the ground. That guy jumped backed up and chased after him and tackled him and the crowd began surging on them.
“The other taller guy had a small baton out,” Short said. “But as the crowd started surging on them, he pulled out a gun.”.
Oakland police Lt. Chris Bolton tweeted about a report of “an officer in need of assistance” near the Whole Foods on Bay Place north of Lake Merritt.
Bolton, though, said the men were not Oakland police officers and later confirmed on Twitter that they were CHP officers. Frank Bonifacio, an Oakland police spokesman, said the department responded to “a request for assistance made by an outside agency near Bay and Harrison Streets in Oakland.”
“We have received a number of questions about the incident,” Bonifacio said in an e-mail Thursday. “We are referring all inquiries regarding this incident to the California Highway Patrol.”
CHP officials did not return calls for comment.
Short said the undercover officers were wearing street clothes and had their faces covered. After the shorter officer tackled the person who attacked him, he pulled out a set of handcuffs. The taller man then radioed for help, Short said.
Prior to the encounter, vandals marching with the group had smashed the windows of a T-Mobile store in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood and made off with some of the store’s merchandise, Short said. A nearby Wells Fargo ATM was also smashed.
Several protesters took to Twitter to say that the undercover officers had instigated acts of vandalism and were banging on windows alongside others.
Short said he did not see the officers’ actions because protesters had surrounded him and had tried to take the memory card out of his camera. Noah Berger, another freelance photographer, was similarly accosted by protesters.
The march had earlier been peaceful, beginning in Berkeley with hundreds of participants calling for justice for Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two unarmed black men who were killed by white police officers in Missouri and New York. The recent demonstrations were set off when grand juries declined to file charges in the cases.
Protesters on Wednesday disrupted traffic at times, as well as a UC Berkeley lecture given by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, but did not attempt to take over any freeways. Oakland police said arrests were made, but did not specify how many and for what reasons.
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