The week of May 25, before George Floyd’s name entered the lexicon of black men killed by police somewhere in these United States of America, I sent a Public Records Act request to Ben Harvey, city manager of Pacific Grove. My request was based on a text message I received over Memorial Day weekend from a resident asking me if I was familiar with The Three Percenters and Molon Labe.
I wasn’t, but I got a very quick education.
The Three Percenters, or III% as the name sometimes appears, is a far-right militia group whose name comes from the misguided belief that only 3 percent of colonists took up arms against the British during the Revolutionary War. If they sound familiar to you, it’s because a group of Three Percenters, along with other protesters at a Memorial Day event, breached barriers in front of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s residence and hung Beshear in effigy, along with the quote “sic semper tyrannis,” from a nearby tree. The Anti-Defamation League has a writeup about the group under the header of “Extremism, Terrorism & Bigotry.” Percenterism is one of three core components in the anti-government militia movement, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Molon Labe, meanwhile, comes from the ancient Greek for “Come and take them” and refers to the demand by Xerces that the Spartans lay down their weapons. Gun rights advocates have seized on the emblem of Molon Labe – usually a face in profile wearing a Spartan helmet or sometimes the Marvel comics’ “Punisher” skull – as representative of their beliefs. And that’s ironic, Esquire writer and former Army Lt. Col. Robert Batemen pointed out, because Molon Labe glorifies “the most rigidly controlled military state in the ancient world in which the individual had almost no rights.”
Why is any of this relevant to Pacific Grove?
Because a member of the Pacific Grove Police Department has those images on his personal vehicle, which late last month was parked for multiple days at the police station, where Germain Hatcher, a P.G. resident, a black woman and a business owner who works across the street from the police station, spent days looking at it and wondering if the world had indeed turned upside down.
I don’t know the officer’s name and I haven’t yet received a response to the PRA request. But P.G. Chief Cathy Madalone, whose response to the situation once it was brought to her attention was swift and decisive, wants people to know: “This is not what we stand for here and I take it very seriously.
“We do not espouse the values held by Three Percenters and Molon Labe,” she says. “That officer is currently not working and I promise you, I’m addressing it.”
For Madalone, this isn’t a matter of bad optics. And the optics aside – with just a small nod to the irony that a guy who espouses anti-government beliefs still takes a check from the government – Hatcher says she worries about how an officer who would espouse those beliefs might relate to the community.
“It erodes confidence in the police department and it’s a huge problem for me,” she says. “I see a lot of these police every day and they are lovely individuals. But if anything goes on over here, who do I call?
“I’m not anti-police,” she adds. “But I’m also not confident that if something happens, would I be able to walk away from that transaction?”
Hatcher describes her business as a politically neutral space; she wants everyone, regardless of their beliefs, to feel comfortable there. “You can be or think anything you want, but you don’t get to impose that on anyone else. But you see (the emblems) and think, this is a full meal of everything that is wrong,” she says.
In the background, there have been demonstrations every day in Monterey County since May 30, as people come together to express outrage and grief over Floyd’s killing. There’s a demand for change in the air, and Madalone wants the demonstrators who plan to come to Lovers Point on June 10 for one such event to know that she and her officers want to stand with them.
She requests the organizers get in touch with her – she wants to offer up snacks and water to the crowd, in addition to the PGPD’s presence.