Albuquerque Trump protests were mostly peaceful, but unruly people caused late violence

Raw reel from Donald Trump protests, riots in Albuquerque from Blair Miller on Vimeo.

A reel of my raw video from the 05/24/2016 protests and riots at the Donald Trump rally in Albuquerque

The news cycle of the past 24 hours in Albuquerque and worldwide has been dominated by Tuesday’s Donald Trump rally at the Albuquerque Convention Center and the mayhem that followed it.

The 24-hour American news media has continually looped video of people running over police cars, throwing rocks at horseback-mounted officers, fighting and getting inundated with smoke from canisters and pepper spray.

What remains unexplained in many of these reports is that the initial protest and the violence that ensued after the rally generally involved different groups of people.

THE PEACEFUL PROTEST

After arriving at the convention center around 3 p.m. Tuesday, there were very few protesters there at that point. The line for people attending the Trump rally was long, and the protesters who started trickling in took their place across Tijeras Avenue from the Trump supporters.

For the first several hours, the protest was peaceful. There were, as was to be expected in the state most densely-populated with Hispanics, people using their First Amendment right to hurl insults and four-letter words at Trump and his supporters.

But early on, it was clear that there were people there to protest politically and peacefully and others there to cause a ruckus.

Protest organizers were distinctly marked, visible and highly-involved. Many of them were from the SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP) and the organization had been clear that the protest was to be peaceful.

The yellow-jersey-clad organizers formed barriers to try and calm protesters when the only path to the convention center was through a narrow alley of anti-Trump folks. When people were out of line with the general message and attitude of the protest, they were reprimanded swiftly by these organizers. Many worked hand-in-hand with the law enforcement agencies at the scene to try and keep things cool.

And everything stayed cool, generally, until right around the time Trump started speaking inside. It was sometime around 7 or 7:30 p.m. when protesters managed to knock down their original barrier at Tijeras on 2nd Street.

Police and organizers were quick to set up another barrier at the north side of Tijeras, though a few protesters and many journalists were stuck on the north side of the barrier and could walk right up to the doors of the convention center.

More people in Guy Fawkes masks or with shirts covering their entire faces started to show up, and it was at least an hour before there was any threat of smoke canisters or pepper spray from police. The tension in the air rose significantly as these people arrived, coupled with mostly young people running around saying, “There’s more of us than them,” and the like to one another – regarding the police at the scene.

Throughout this time, as the sun started to set, the head organizers of the protest could be seen talking in length with the higher-ranking officers at the scene who were directing officers’ actions.

The yellow-clad organizers stepped in alongside police when people started to get unruly and too close to the convention center. Many of them formed a human chain to maintain a barrier between the unruly protesters and the SWAT officers.

Even many of the non-organizing protesters shared the same message: it was a peaceful protest and there was no need to get personal with Trump supporters they disagreed with. There were children in the area that most of the peaceful protesters did not want to have to witness the bad actions of a few, they said.

PROTEST TURNS VIOLENT AS CROWD DWINDLES

But as the Trump rally ended inside and the peaceful protesters started to go home (many had been out there for at least five hours at that point), night fell and the unruly protesters started to outnumber the peaceful ones.

Then there was the other group outside: the people who were just there to “see what happens,” as one woman told me she was doing.

They certainly got a show, if that’s what they were looking for.

As police directed their mounted unit onto the patio of the convention center, those who were looking a fight saw their opportunity. People began to burn Trump merchandise and throw rocks from the xeriscaping outside the convention center. One could hear the “ping” of rocks hitting police shields and convention center windows.

Nearly all of the officers from the Albuquerque Police Department, New Mexico State Police, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department and Rio Rancho police maintained their composure throughout the afternoon and evening. Many were happy to talk with the protesters and help them through barriers to leave the scene if they wished. There were no signs that police did anything to instigate the people presumably already there to cause trouble.

But when people started lighting things on fire and throwing them at SWAT and mounted officers, and the barrage of small rocks continued, police got the metal barriers back out and started to push everyone back from the convention center doors.

Trump supporters stood on the top floor of the convention center windows with their signs, prompting the protesters below to throw rocks at them as well.

There were a few rogue attempts to tear down the police barriers, but officers quickly re-established them. Eventually, the barriers were pushed all the way off the convention center patio and back down to Tijeras Avenue.

By this point, things had gotten wild enough for most people to go home. What remained outside out of the nearly-1,000 protesters who were there at the peak time were maybe 100 or 200 people either there for the unruly protest or to watch.

It’s hard not to mention at some point that we are about two years out from the riots that happened in the city after homeless camper James Boyd was shot by APD officers. Those events were referenced throughout the night by many people in the unruly crowd – still, apparently, fresh in their minds of “what could happen.”

Once officers had pushed the barriers back to Tijeras Ave., most of them put on their gas masks. This caused everyone who was ready for a Boyd-esque protest to believe that was the case, and they started to take action, especially after officers deployed a few smoke cans and pepper-sprayed a couple of people who would not back away.

More rocks were thrown and some protesters continued to instigate police, who did not respond. Officers systematically pushed the barrier back further every few minutes, seeming to quell most of the unruliness.

Protest medics in the crowd treated two people who stood still for seconds as officers pepper sprayed them. The medics tried to help a man who had cut his hand, but he didn’t want their help.

Organizers in yellow vests continued to yell at people to keep the peace.

By 9:15, most was calm at the convention center, but we had heard people had moved over to Civic Plaza.

A fellow producer and myself headed a block west down Tijeras to the plaza, and we found a larger group than we had seen in more than an hour – a mix of the unruly protesters and other people yet unseen that evening.

Russ Contreras, an Associated Press reporter also at the scene of the protests all day, wrote many in the crowd at Civic Plaza and afterward were seen with gang tattoos.

At Civic Plaza, the “f— Donald Trump” chants continued, and a few Trump supporters who tried to voice their opinions against what, at this point, was a mob mentality situation were met with a swift helping of violence.

In the first 10 minutes I was at Civic Plaza, there were two fights that quickly grew into the Trump supporters being “jumped” for several seconds before people wanting to keep the peace and officers were able to break the crowd and separate people.

More Mexican flags came out at Civic Plaza as well. While there had been a handful at the early protest, they were more numerous at the plaza as people drove around smoking their tires, hanging out the window flying the eagle and serpent.

Minutes after the fights, people started to run southbound over a line of police cars that had been lined up on 3rd Street. SWAT teams had already moved over to the plaza from the convention center at that point, and the running of the cars, so to speak, was the impetus for the most intense violence of the night.

People at the plaza still interested in stirring things up continued down 3rd Street to Central Avenue, which turned into a “car show,” as some described it. V8-powered trucks and cars revved their engines and smoked their tires. People stood in the middle of the street. A few kids – many of the people around at this point were teenagers – hopped up on people’s cars.

Mounted officers and SWAT officers continued their calculated march down 3rd Street.

Once things moved south of Central, they started to get more violent. Officers had ignored the people yelling expletives at them and startling their horses. They had ignored the smoking tires and obvious illegal things that were happening in the center of Albuquerque up until that point.

But as the group was pushed further south, past Gold and Silver, the officers seemed to have had enough.

Around that time, things no longer seemed to have anything to do with protesting and more with acting wild – essentially testing the patience of officers.

The clearest example that this was more party than protest at that point was when people would mob the national live shots being done by journalists from the scene. The camera light would go on and 30 people would be stuffed around the national reporter doing their live shot, screaming.

“Let’s f—ing do this,” was a common phrase among the throng of mostly teenagers and people in their early-20s as police continued to push people down 3rd Street. But little action was ever really taken. People continued to grab handfuls of whatever rocks they could find and hurl them at the officers.

Many of them avoided the “front lines,” which seemed to be reserved for a few ornery individuals and a woman walking with the officers. Most of the rock-throwers decided to set up far behind the front lines, apparently assuming they had better arms than they really did.

We were hit with rocks meant for officers that never made it far enough on multiple occasions. Most of them were harmless pebbles: the larger rocks often seemed to have met their mark, as six APD officers were injured.

One man was seen and heard yelling at the SWAT officers to “f—ing shoot” him, and when they failed to oblige, the man rushed into an officer. It was one of two instances where officers used their batons to hit people who had gotten physical with them.

Most of the time, police used smoke canisters and pepper spray to push people back, and it worked. More APD officers – not in gas masks or protective gear – flanked the west side of the remaining protesters. They were also met with stones, but the additional manpower seemed to be nearly the final straw for the stragglers still out causing trouble.

Those people split up at Lead Avenue; most of them went west to 4th Street. But it seemed to be the final blow to the crowd, as most of them opted to finally go home. It was about 11:30 p.m. at that point.

A small group of about 20 went up into a parking garage, but were followed shortly thereafter by 20 NMSP SWAT officers, several of whom were armed with weapons that shoot rubber bullets.

We walked through downtown for another 40 minutes, talking to people out and about and officers still blocking roads. People thanked officers for their work and laughed about “Burque’s” craziness.

By just after midnight, any sign of the stragglers was gone. Our crew packed up our truck back at the now-quiet convention center — where it all started –- and went home for the night.

“People protesting at the event weren’t the problem,” NMSP Chief Pete Kassetas said Wednesday, reinforcing the point. “[The violence afterward] had nothing to do with that peaceful protest.”

His message was quite contrary to what Albuquerque City Councilor Dan Lewis said in a statement released Wednesday that blamed SWOP for the violence, though he was himself inside the Trump rally when the tension began.

SWOP and ProgressNow NM both responded to Lewis Wednesday afternoon.