Salinas grapples with violence, image and absurd FAQs.

This is what it’s come to.

1. On Sunday, a group of self-proclaimed anarchists from Oakland organized a field trip to Salinas. They generally acted like jackasses and tried to incite violence during a well-organized and peaceful protest through East Salinas held in the wake of two officer-involved shooting fatalities in two weeks. When they couldn’t get anywhere with the crowd, they broke off, headed to the Salinas Police Department and tagged it with graffiti while spouting meaningless rhetoric. Please, anarchists of Oakland, go away. Your brand of help is not wanted.

2. Also on Sunday, the Salinas Police Department released a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about those officer-involved shootings in which two Latinos – who were carrying edged instruments (one a lettuce knife, the other hedge trimmers) – were shot and killed in separate fatal encounters with police in East Salinas. For a department struggling mightily against the perception that its treatment of the Latino community vacillates between disdainful to murderous, the FAQ managed to be breathtakingly insensitive. (Among the questions: If the shootings aren’t connected, why did they all involve Latinos? Explanation: “More than 9 out of 10 violent crimes in Salinas are committed by Latinos. People don’t commit violent crimes because they are Latino, of course… violent crime is much more likely in underserved neighborhoods.”) The department’s interim information officer, Spencer Critchley, explains the FAQ was generated in response to actual questions – both from aggrieved members of the community and bigots who are saying the shootings are about lawbreaking Latinos. Still, I don’t see the point of quoting the statistic. True or not, why rub salt in the open wound?

3. Apparently it’s become a fashion choice for elementary-school age children to wear “F**K the Police” T-shirts to some of the protests. It’s your community; you should protest the way you see fit as long as nobody else is getting hurt. But why that shirt? “I don’t get it,” says one friend whose combat-hardened Vietnam vet father was an early organizer of the United Farm Workers. “My father used to get his head split open as a matter of routine on protest lines, and he never would have let us wear a shirt like that.”

WHY DID ALL THE SHOOTINGS INVOLVE LATINOS?

4. John Burris has come to town, and while that might not make the Salinas government or the police nervous, it should. Burris is a prominent Oakland-based civil rights attorney who’s made a lucrative career out of police brutality and deadly force cases. Among his more notable clients: Rodney King ($3.8 million verdict against the LAPD); victims of the Oakland “Riders,” a gang of thugs within the Oakland P.D. ($10.3 million verdict); and the daughter of Oscar Grant, fatally shot as he lay face down and unarmed in the Fruitvale BART station by a BART police officer ($5.1 million negotiated settlement).

Burris filed a claim against the city of Salinas on Tuesday on behalf of the family of Carlos Mejia, the day laborer from El Salvador killed on May 20, an act captured on video that went viral on YouTube and sparked a day of violent unrest on the East Side. It doesn’t matter, Burris says, if Mejia was drunk. (They’re not yet sure.) It doesn’t matter, Burris says, if Mejia had broken into a woman’s house and threatened her with sexual assault. (That’s what police allege led to the 911 call.) What matters, Burris says, is that the officers were in reasonable fear for their lives and were justified in their use of deadly force. (They didn’t and weren’t, he says.) If the city of Salinas doesn’t negotiate a settlement to the claim, Burris plans to file a federal civil rights suit and call for a separate federal investigation into the Salinas P.D.

5. Oh how I wish there was as much community outrage and sorrow over the murder of Constantino Garcia as there was over the officer-involved shootings. Garcia, a 23-year-old with a wife and baby, had just moved to Salinas to seek work in the strawberry fields. He stepped out of his house during the May 21 protest to see what was happening and was shot to death in front of about 100 witnesses. So far, not a single person has stepped forward to tell the police what they saw.

MARY DUAN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com or follow her at twitter.com/maryrduan