Many San Diegans are joining the No Kings Day protests happening nationwide this weekend.
For those attending, civil rights attorney Timothy Scott said the First Amendment protects your right to protest.
"The right to protest is a key constitutional right. It's part of being a citizen," he said. "It's part of being a community member."
But there are constraints to those rights. Protesters, for example, don't have the right to incite violence or throw things at officers.
"Spitting or assaulting or putting hands on the police or anybody is not expressive conduct, that's not protected by the First Amendment," Scott said, adding that harming someone or destroying property are also not protected by the First Amendment.
"Certain kinds of obscenity are not protected by the First Amendment," he said. "As long as you're not committing violence, as long as you're not hurting somebody, you are within the bounds of the First Amendment."
There are about a dozen protests planned in San Diego.
Organizers say they also want the protest to be peaceful because violence undercuts the message of the protest: standing up to fascism and authoritarianism.
“While we see protests that are overwhelmingly peaceful, when some bad actors engage in property destruction or violence, the Trump team says, 'See, there now, we need to escalate further,'” said Ezra Levin from Indivisible, one of the organizers of the nationwide protest. "And that’s Trump’s plan. Rinse and repeat. It’s straight from the authoritarian playbook.”
San Diego Police Lt. Travis Easter said if the protest gets out of hand, police can declare "unlawful assembly," which is a lawful order, and people must disperse.
"Criminal activity, vandalism, carrying weapons, trying to attack officers, trying to vandalize things, that's when it will be declared an unlawful assembly," he said. "That is when people can be arrested if they are not dispersing properly."
Though he said the San Diego Police Department will be there to ensure everyone's safety, adding the department does not work with federal immigration enforcement.
“We are still doing law enforcement activities, whether that be ... arresting people and performing enforcement. That is still happening everyday," Easter said. "But that doesn't mean that we're ICE. It doesn't mean that it is all ICE-related.”
Scott said the goal during any protests is not to engage with police, but if you must, videotape everything so you have a record of what happened.
“When it comes to a police encounter, the goal is to end it quickly, to not prolong it," he said. "And some key phrases are, 'Am I being detained? Am I free to go?' You say those things out loud to make sure that they can't characterize the encounter as consensual, when in fact it's a detention.”
And if you are injured or harmed during a police encounter, Scott said you only have a short window to file a claim.
"When somebody is injured by police in the state of California, they only have six months to file a claim to preserve their rights to take legal action," he said. "And that's something that goes by very quickly. And many people don't know about that tort claim deadline."
SDPD said it is working with organizers to ensure a peaceful protest here. If it does get out of hand, police say they are prepared and are working with partner agencies to ensure what happened in L.A. doesn’t happen here.
