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SALT LAKE CITY — Police say the owner of the Weathered Waves cider bar, recently investigated for announcing he would not serve Zionists, was arrested on Thursday and again on Friday, in connection to this week's pro-Palestine protests at the University of Utah and a recently installed memorial to Palestinians killed in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Michael Valentine, who ran in Salt Lake City's recent mayoral race in which incumbent Mayor Erin Mendenhall won, said the initial source of the trouble came from signs Salt Lake City put up inside a permitted installation in front of the Salt Lake City-County Building, which was created to memorialize the 30,000-plus Palestinians who have died in the war.
His bar earlier this year was the source of controversy after Valentine posted that Zionists were banned from the establishment. After an investigation, the Utah Attorney General's Office determined there was no evidence that the bar had denied service to anyone, even though the posts expressed "potentially discriminatory views."
Bar owner's first arrest
Valentine and Aziz Abuzayed say they worked for months to secure an official permit for the installation, but when people started to complain, city officials placed folding signs in the exhibit at the city-county building, distancing the city from its message with a note that read, in part, "Displays and their messages ... are not connected with nor endorsed by Salt Lake City Corporation."
"The signs were out there as a result of a number of calls. People were concerned asking if the display was a city-sponsored display," Mendenhall's spokesman, Andrew Wittenberg, said.
"They're basically trying to censor the meaning and the impact of the memorial," Valentine alleges, so he began reaching out to city staff, including liaison Tim Cosgrove and the event permitting coordinator, in order to get the signs removed. In an email to the city employees, Valentine said the signs were "a violation of our permit and free speech," and called for them to be taken away.
"We will be taking the city signs down at the end of the day if they are not removed from our installation," Valentine said in an email to Cosgrove on Tuesday morning. "Please let me know where to return the signs."
According to Cosgrove, many groups, organizations and individuals "expressed their opinions, their beliefs, their priorities both ways on the display," but he told KSL that he had not been aware of Valentine's attempts to contact him.
At the end of the day, Valentine put the signs in his car and posted on Instagram: "Erin Mendenhall, we have your signs. Let us know where you want us to bring them. I have tried calling your office and your liasons (sic) all week and you refuse to return our calls or meet with us."
Thursday, Valentine said he woke up with five police officers at his door. "They arrested me right there on the spot in my shorts. I didn't have shoes on," he said.
According to the police booking affidavit, Valentine was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of theft of the A-frame signs, which police said cost $514. Police said video surveillance showed the signs being taken, and Valentine posted a video to his social media "in regards to the signs that were taken." Police said when they arrested Valentine, he "uttered that the signs were in his vehicle," the affidavit states.
Valentine said he was held at the jail for around eight hours and that he believes he was "unlawfully arrested and detained."
Second arrest
Friday, Valentine and Abuzayed returned to the memorial to find the signs reinstalled. "We decided to go in and take the signs into the mayor's office," Abuzayed said, "but the security guards took the signs at the door."
The two organizers were escorted upstairs but were not allowed in the mayor's office. "We were waiting for the mayor outside her office; we tried to talk to several people," Abuzayed said. "It was very unfruitful." After a phone call with Cosgrove, the two gave up, leaving "without any promises from the city and without them taking further actions."
Valentine, however, was met by University of Utah police and was arrested again, this time for being present at the encampments during the protests earlier this week.
"I was up there at that protest on Monday, but I wasn't one of the organizers, I wasn't really in the scrum of it," Valentine said. He is currently a student there studying film and media and contends he was documenting the protest with other journalists, posting videos from the night on social media.
He said that the university police "trespassed" him from the campus for a year, and he does not know how that will affect his enrollment. A spokesperson for the university said that being trespassed from campus is a police action and not from the administration.
According to the student policy, for any criminal proceedings, a student may be temporarily suspended by administration while a resolution is reached, which means they would not be able to attend classes, including online classes, and not allowed on university premises.
The second police booking affidavit said Valentine was "engaging police officers in a disorderly way" after the police warned the protestors three times they "were part of an unlawful assembly," and that he was arrested for investigation of trespassing upon an institution of higher learning, disorderly conduct and failure to disperse.
Valentine said he thinks he's being politically targeted, as he ran against Mendenhall and is currently running for mayor of Salt Lake County against incumbent Mayor Jenny Wilson. Wittenberg, from the mayor's office, wholly denied any accusation that the arrests were politically motivated.
Formal charges have not been filed against Valentine.
