Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido announced a citywide curfew for Santa Ana on Sunday, May 31 after a night of violence and looting amid protests over the police killing of George Floyd , as demonstrators hurled fireworks and rocks at police, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
The curfew goes into effect at 10 p.m. Sunday until 5:30 a.m. Monday.
Five people were arrested from the disturbance that began Saturday night in an area of South Bristol Street, where several hundred protesters turned out. The arrest numbers, from 2 a.m. Sunday, could change, Santa Ana Police spokesman Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.
At least two stores were looted. One sheriff’s deputy was taken to an area hospital with a lower extremity injury sustained Saturday night, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Carrie Braun. There were no immediate reports of other injuries Sunday morning.
Some demonstrators Saturday night pleaded unsuccessfully with others to stop throwing fireworks at police, with one of them asking, “what are you accomplishing?” in a demonstration intended to protest the death of Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer jammed a knee into his throat.
Police declared the assembly illegal and gave the demonstrators 15 minutes to disperse. At 8:50 p.m. they began slowly pushing demonstrators onto the curb and away from the road.
Sunday morning, residents with brooms, dustpans and gloves went through the streets, picking up and bagging the debris from the night before. They were responding to a call on a Santa Ana Facebook page to clean up the aftermath.
“That’s not the true Santa Ana,” said Jessica Vega, 25, who helped pick up the debris from firecrackers thrown at officers, bottles and other trash with her sister Lesley, 18, both lifelong residents of the city. “It’s just not Santa Ana people.”
Santa Ana police officers thanked the volunteers over the loudspeakers of their patrol cars and arranged to pick up the bags and bags of trash collected by the group, Jessica Vega said.
“Watching what went down last night, it really just broke my heart to see people behaving like that,” said another life-long Santa Ana resident, Alexander Rodriguez, 25, who helped dispatch his fellow volunteers to clean up.
He said the group started at about 10, but grew to 60 or 70 and worked its way from the Smart & Final that was looted at Edinger Street along Bristol Street to McFadden Avenue where they were wrapping up. Nearby at the Northgate Gonzalez Market shoppers exited past boarded-up windows. An AutoZone store also was looted.
The west side of the street lined with businesses was thick with graffiti, some of it aimed at police. Crews were already out painting over the graffiti.
The windows of the Rancho Santiago Digital Media Center, operated by the Rancho Santiago Community College District, were covered in scrawling, but Mater Dei High School at Edinger and the elementary school on the other side of the street seemed from the outside to have been largely left alone.
“That’s probably what hit me the most, on a deeper level,” Rodriguez said of the graffiti. “Seeing it spread out like that.
“We’ve got to do better.”
City News Service contributed to this report
