By Barley Lewis-McCabe

It was 1:00 a.m. on March 6 of his final semester at Cal Poly Humboldt, and graduate student Rick Toledo was sleeping calmly in bed with his cats.

“There were really loud bangs on my door, and I just knew right away,” Toledo said. “It’s gonna be University Police, isn’t it?” 

Toledo walked to the stairs of his apartment and asked the University Police Department (UPD) officers if they had a warrant. They did, and Toledo subsequently walked outside and surrendered.

“They ended up grabbing me and treating me like I was some kind of terrorist at first,” Toledo said.
“They ripped my clothes and handcuffed me, all [that] fun stuff.” 

He was taken to the UPD station, then to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on four felony charges: criminal conspiracy, false imprisonment, battery and assault. He was arrested on a Ramey warrant, which can be used by the police to hold someone for up to 48 hours before charges have been issued from the district attorney’s office. The 48-hour holding period does not apply to weekends.

On Sunday morning, Toledo was released after posting $25,000 bail. That afternoon, he exited the jail to a small group of friends and colleagues who took him home. Before he left jail an employee asked him for a favor. 

 ‘Can you tell everyone that you’re free now? We haven’t been able to use our phones for days,’ Toledo said. He then explained that the call in campaign to advocate for his release was so widespread that it clogged the jail’s phone lines.

After his arrest, Toledo’s mother and sister reached out to community activists and worked on a large outreach campaign to raise money for his legal fund, as well as awareness for his arrest. 

“My brother is not a bad person. He does a lot to help and it really caught me off guard that he was in there,” Nicole Toledo, said. “We love him so much. He is such an amazing brother and an amazing person in general. All he cares about is helping people and doing good in this world. We’re very supportive of him.”

The Cal Poly Humboldt chapter of Students For a Democratic Society worked with other SDS national, and the other chapters across America to garner public support for Toledo and to get people to call into the DA’s office to demand his immediate release. 

“All of the national SDS stands in solidarity with Rick. We helped get him out of jail in the first case and we’ll continue to advocate to get these bogus charges dropped.” National SDS President Erin Boyle said.

“Jail’s jail, you know,” Toledo said. “I watched the paint dry, I found some books that I could read. You know, it’s jail, you eat the slop. When I was in there, I was just thinking about what I was gonna do when I got out, to kind of fight against the school for what they had done to me.” 

When asked for comment, CPH Communications Specialist Iridian Casarez  said that the university is unable to comment on specific student conduct cases. Toledo is still suspended from the university.

Toledo told a Lumberjack reporter that in spite of the arrest he has no plans to change course with his activism. Additionally he speculated on the root cause of the extensive charges levied against him.

“It’s not from a place of strength that they’ve attacked me.
It’s from a place of weakness,” Toledo said. “This is their attempt to finally silence the dissent, and any time that you have this kind of harsh response, it actually tends to create more unrest, and it tends to create more people opposed to you, and more support for the people you’re trying to crush. And I think that they’ve made just a terrible decision here.”

Barley is the good-timing Editor In Chief of The Lumberjack, as well as a jack of all trades news writer. Contact him for any reason at bl258@humboldt.edu