CHP MEMORIES

While I was still on probation (1st year on the job), and working the swing shift, something happened that was very much out of the ordinary. When this work day in late February, 1970 was almost completed, or so I thought, I was in the office finishing the days paperwork, and getting ready to go home. It was around 11pm, when the shift SGT came into the briefing room and told us that we might be working some overtime. Initially the details were sketchy, but it wasn't long before we learned that the Santa Barbara County Sheriffs Department had invoked a mutual aid request, due to riots near the University of California at Santa Barbara.

When a police department asks for help, it usually involves adjacent cities, and perhaps the local sheriffs department. When a county sheriff asks for help, depending on the seriousness of the issue, it sometimes involved our department. In my entire career, that only happened a handful of times, but on this particular evening, it was happening for the first time. We were told that the U.C. students were rioting in the Isla Vista community next to the U.C. Campus, and that several buildings were burning. The local police had been overwhelmed, forced out of the area, and the fire department was unable to contain the fires.

Around midnight, about 12-15 of us loaded 3-4 in a car, and it became a code 3 drive to Santa Barbara. Normally, the drive would have taken about 2 hours, but because traffic was light, and we were driving very fast, it didn't take very long for us to arrive in the staging area just outside of Isla Vista, which is north of the City of Santa Barbara. I remember thinking that there were a lot of us there, including officers from surrounding departments. Instead of driving our patrol cars into the troubled area, we loaded into several buses, and started the short drive toward the burning community. It wasn't long before I was surprised at the sound of objects hitting both sides of the bus we were in. The rioters were throwing objects at the buses, and several of the windows in our bus were broken. My defense mechanisms kicked up a few notches as we passed by the burning Bank of America building, still being pelted by rocks, and other projectiles. When we started getting off the buses, we were probably 2-300 strong, and by this time, it was 2-3 in the morning. Our show of strength allowed the fire department to come back in and put out the fires. Evidently, our numbers were enough to cause the crowds to dissipate, or very possibly, the late hour had something to do with it, but the rest of the morning was relatively quiet.

We ended up going to Santa Barbara two more times, but experienced nothing like we did that first night. In fact, other than public demonstrations, the violence, and destruction of property was pretty much limited to February 25th, 1970