Hellyer Avenue at Palisades Drive, San Jose 95111
Tucked next to the 101 freeway toward the south end of San Jose, Hellyer Park is one of few large, public open spaces in this city.
In the 1970s a predominantly Mexican- American community faced off against law enforcement here as part of a larger movement to hold police accountable for killings. For several generations, the park has served as a site for family gatherings with strong usage by San Jose’s Latinx population and as a general social space for the multiethnic communities of San Jose. When San Jose police shot and killed Manuel Lopez in the spring of 1970, the killing fanned a smoldering tension that exploded here at Hellyer Park.
The Latinx community took to the streets to protest the killing of fourteen-year-old Lopez, calling for police reform and a grand jury investigation. Tired of the hopelessness of reacting to the police only after such acts of violence, activists and students formed the Community Alert Patrol (CAP) to proactively prevent police violence. Equipping themselves with walkie-talkies, tape recorders, cameras, and their own cars, the mostly Mexican American volunteers took to following the police across the city to hold them accountable. The police department and district attorney agreed that CAP was well within its legal rights, but police did not take kindly to being watched and recorded. CAP claimed credit for a decline in incidents of police brutality and harassment, while also noting that the police regularly stopped CAP patrols and harassed their volunteers. Indeed, the police went so far as to pressure and intimidate the entire organization: The Police Officers Association cut its donation to the Santa Clara United Fund (now United Way) citing its support for the Mexican American Community Services Agency, which provided space for CAP’s radio dispatch.
Hellyer Park had long served as an important space for Latinx communities to socialize, and it was also a regular patrol site for CAP. On May 23, 1971, a fight broke out at the park. A park ranger and members of the CAP patrol attempted to break up the fight; the ranger called for police assistance. In the chaos, a man was shot and killed, and reports of who he was and how it happened spun out of control. A general call went out over police channels that an officer was “hit and down.” At the same time, word spread to community members that the police had shot and killed another Chicanx youth. Neither story was true, but as police and sheriff deputies poured into the park believing an officer had been shot, they were met with an angry crowd that believed yet another act of police brutality had taken place in the park that day. The crowd threw rocks and bottles at the police, who made several arrests. Two CAP patrols remained on the scene, recording and photographing. Investigators later asked whether the CAP activists had intentionally disregarded a police dispersal order, never heard it, or whether police had consciously prevented CAP from leaving the park. Whatever the case, by the end of the afternoon police ruined CAP’s film before it could be developed, smashed their audio tapes, and arrested members of the CAP patrol, confiscating their vehicles and remaining equipment.
In the subsequent trial, the police maintained that CAP incited the riot and refused police orders to disperse. Four of the CAP patrol members were acquitted, while two were given expensive fines and probation of several years. The two convicted of criminal charges were young Chicanx mothers who were profiled by the jury as irresponsible for engaging in activism rather than parenting. CAP, for its part, worked with other Chicanx organizers to demand a grand jury investigation of the illegal arrests and destruction of CAP property. CAP’s efforts met with some symbolic success when several police officers were suspended for three weeks without pay. CAP continued to monitor the police until 1974, when they were supplanted by a similar group, the Monitors, who took up the work until 1978.