My cousin and I were protesting a DUI checkpoint that looked like something else. This checkpoint was close to a church on Cedar and Merrill in Rialto, CA. We noticed that the church was filled with cars and low trucks. We saw that most of the people that were being detained were Latinos/Chicanos. A few weeks before we were
protesting against the ICE raids in Riverside. We knew what was taking place. This was a racist checkpoint. We made a couple of signs and decided to protest this, get people's attention, warn them of the upcoming racist checkpoint.
Within a minute of standing on the corner to protest, we were handcuffed and thrown against a fence. I told the officer he was using excessive force when kicking my legs apart to search me. He not only ignored me, but kicked me again in the same leg. He took us inside the church parking lot, knowing we had not committed a crime and could not take us to jail. He constantly insulted and threatened us.
He finally decided to let us go with a fine. Before he takes the handcuffs off, he gets our signs and shows them to his fellow officers. We could hear them talking behind us. One officer said,"What are you going to do with them?" And officer Jones, the arresting officer, told them he was already letting us go with a fine. I heard another officer say, "F.....them, don't let them go, show them the system."
When he comes over to take the handcuffs off my cousin Alex, he claimed that my cousin was resiting. Resisting as if he was arresting him, but he was already taking the handcuffs off to let us go. He sits my cousin back down and tell us that we were under arrest. I spend 12 hours in jail while most of the people arrested arrested at the same time, including my cousin, spend 6 to 8 hours in jail. What happened was unfair and unjust. We did not break any laws. We did not do what the arresting officer was saying. Our court date is in about a month and we need help.
