Group in Proud Boys hoodies and a Santa costume crash Northern California toy drive
Demonstrators affiliating themselves with the far-right group known as the Proud Boys crashed a holiday toy drive Saturday in Placerville, leading to community outrage as well as clarifying statements from the city and its police department denying involvement.
Placerville police were assisting with toy collection and traffic control for a permitted Toys for Tots event near the city’s Bell Tower on Saturday and Sunday, the department said in a Facebook post.
Near the end of Saturday’s toy drive, more than two dozen demonstrators arrived, most of them donning black-and-yellow hoodies that read “Hangtown Proud Boy” on the back — and with one of them dressed as Santa, a video posted by independent media outlet Black Zebra Productions shows.
Hangtown is Placerville’s former name, and the official city seal is emblazoned with a noose, both facts that have been a source of local debate intensifying in recent months as some argue that the symbol evokes racism and violence. The hoodies seen in Saturday’s video have logos on the front showing a noose hanging from a tree.
“It’s not the city logo, but it’s some take on the term ‘Hangtown,’” Placerville Mayor Michael Saragosa told The Sacramento Bee in a phone interview Tuesday morning. “It’s unfortunate. We’re gonna have this conversation on the city logo and the noose.”
The group posed for photos, flashing a hand gesture identified by the Anti-Defamation League as an “expression of white supremacy,” as they gathered near some of the toy collection bins in front of a Placerville police cruiser, the video showed.
And, although the toy drive was set up as a drive-through due to COVID-19 safety protocols, the group gathered on foot and joined in close proximity to one another, with only a handful seen wearing face coverings.
Saragosa made his position unambiguous: “We do not want the Proud Boys here in Placerville.”
“Their presence is actually making it very uncomfortable for tourists and businesses alike. If they really wanna help us,” Saragosa continued, addressing the possibility that the demonstrators may have also donated toys, “don’t show up in a group wearing Proud Boys outfits and throwing up signs as if they were a gang around town.”
Photos circulated online were cropped to include the police cruiser — several posts included captions suggesting police were supporting the Proud Boys demonstration.
Placerville Police Chief Joe Wren and City Manager Cleve Morris posted a joint statement to Facebook denying that the city and its police department “invited, associated with or supports this organization,” which the statement did not explicitly name and referred to only as “a group with a political agenda.” The statement said officers were simply there helping with the Toys for Tots event.
Because the police cruiser was parked in a public place, officers had “no authority to disallow anyone from taking a photograph of it or near it,” Wren and Morris wrote.
“It is unfortunate some chose to use the Toys for Tots event to push a personal or political agenda,” the statement said, in part. “This event was about supporting the kids in our community.”
The local Toys for Tots chapter responded with a similar statement.
“It is unfortunate that while we were conducting our drive-thru donation event, that others chose to use a charity that benefits children to further their own political or personal agenda,” Stacie Wall, local coordinator for Toys for Tots in El Dorado County, told The Bee in an emailed response Tuesday afternoon. “We have no affiliation with the Proud Boys.”
Heidi Mayerhofer of the Placerville Downtown Association shared with the The Bee a flier calling for an “anti racism demonstration” ahead of Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting.
“This image needs to be denounced by our city immediately,” the flier reads, in part. “While it is true that this group was not invited nor was it sanctioned by our city, the optics are bad and need to be addressed immediately and unequivocally by our city leaders.”
Placerville City Council meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Mayerhofer’s flier urges community members to share their concerns during the Zoom call-in public comment section of the council meeting.
Regarding the local Proud Boys group’s use of the noose image, Saragosa says he thinks they may have “embraced it just because it might offend some people.”
Over the summer, the city tabled a decision to consider changing the city nickname until 2021. Saragosa said Tuesday that he wants to hold meetings about the matter in person, after the coronavirus pandemic ends, rather than via Zoom meeting, so that the community could have a “proper conversation” without the element of internet anonymity.
Efforts to identify an organizer or representative for Saturday’s group of demonstrators were unsuccessful.
The incident happened the same day as a demonstration that unfolded near the state Capitol building in Sacramento, involving protests and counter-protests by the Proud Boys and Antifa facing off, as first reported by Capital Public Radio. Police reportedly fired projectiles into the crowd at one point.
“There’s certainly a violent element to this group as well,” Saragosa said Tuesday. “It’s just not a welcome group that we want in Placerville, and I think the community’s been pretty clear about that.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 11:09 AM.
