Justin Thompson initially reached out to the Gainesville Police Department (GPD) early last summer because he didn’t want to break any laws. As protests spread after the police killing of George Floyd, Thompson and other young progressives in the small North Texas city planned their own demonstration aimed at pressuring local officials to take down a pair of Confederate monuments: one perched above a city park and the other outside the Cooke County Courthouse in the town square. After emailing police officials about the protest and meeting with a captain to discuss safety issues and permitting requirements, Thompson followed up with another email to GPD, stressing that he understood the “importance that we follow the law while exercising our rights.”
Despite those early overtures, the relationship between police and activists in Gainesville quickly soured. By September, GPD had charged Thompson and two other organizers with his group, PRO Gainesville, with obstructing a roadway, a class B misdemeanor, while marching in the street. Soon afterward, Joel Najera, a progressive candidate for the local school board, gave $10 to PRO Gainesville’s GoFundMe page—and, as a joke, displayed the donation under the name “PC Kevin Phillips” with the comment “I need attention, and these kids help me get it. Every villain needs a hero!” (Phillips is the GPD’s chief.) Phillips later told the Gainesville Register that he asked the Texas Rangers to investigate the donation “so it would be completely unbiased.” In February, local prosecutors charged Najera with impersonating the chief “with the intent to harm or intimidate,” a class A misdemeanor.
