It was last Saturday, as a street medic awareness session was followed by a “Stop Police Terror” protest organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation at the Believe plaza.
But as we arrived, several street medics and bystanders kept referring to a downtown Reno ambassador who had allegedly berated them with strange rants, and then apparently returned, took off his shirt and berated them more with incoherent and threatening language, before being escorted away by another ambassador.
One of those targeted, Jake Maynard, shared with us a photo, which we tweeted out. Others on social media immediately grew concerned with this situation, while some, including journalists, reached out to us, saying they didn’t believe this was an ambassador, wondering why we were publicizing someone’s apparent meltdown. But what about the words he was yelling, we wondered, making people feel unsafe, especially coming from a uniformed and then shirtless “ambassador”? What about his position of authority trying to intimidate law abiding protesters? Did his uniform and Segway confuse them?
“My initial reaction to the ambassador was that he was not a good example of Reno. He responded to the medic, who wasn’t aware of who the ambassadors were, as he wasn’t from Reno, with aggression. The medic asked him if he was affiliated with law enforcement, and he said no, he wasn’t. I don’t recall if the medic responded with ‘good’ or ‘ok,’ but from there, the ambassador said something along the lines of ‘Who would your sister call if she was getting raped?’ to which the medic replied, ‘probably me.’ This seemed to visibly upset the ambassador, but he drove off on the Segway. The initial interruption caught everyone off guard as he approached from behind us and just started yelling. He then called us a ‘gang’ and told us that we were breaking the rules of the Believe plaza and pointed at the sign and told us to leave.”
One medic, Larry, told reporter Rachel Jackson he was there to support the protest and “teach some basic street medicine.” He said the ambassador had also tried to stop their gathering. “He had tried to shoo us off before, but we didn’t exceed the guidelines. He said 25 people or more, and we were like ‘dude, there’s like ten of us.’ And then he came back out of uniform, and then even more out of uniform because he ripped his shirt off, trying to fight a group of us, swearing in front of children, and saying how someone was raping family members of participants, and that you would want to call police. And we were just like ‘dude like there like kids … here. And then he just kept trying to fight everyone to the point where he almost got Maced by a bunch of people.”
Our Instagram post was finally met with an official statement, but it didn’t exactly confirm whether the heckler was indeed an ambassador.
Larry says the ambassador returned again, lunging toward the group, trying to fight, only to be escorted away, apparently by another Reno ambassador.
Maynard also elaborated on the bizarreness of the heckling and threats as these concluded with another ambassador on hand.
“When he returned to the area out of uniform he firstly interrupted the medic’s demonstration by saying ‘I’m here with my black friend’ and standing next to a Black guy who I also believe to be an ambassador and looked extremely embarrassed during the whole interaction. Other members of the medic group started to argue with him and told him to leave, and that just made him angrier to the point where he called us “f*ggots” and then took his shirt off to try to fight members of the medic group.” At this point, Maynard said “his friend began to hold him back and try to move him out of the area. Most of us were just standing there thinking, ‘Is this really happening?’ I’ve seen people get upset and haggle at protests before, but this guy went further than I’ve personally seen before and had to be physically escorted away.”
After collecting these testimonies, we tried to get in touch with the Reno Ambassadors but they kept ignoring our calls, or who knows, maybe not taking them seriously. Journalists and bystanders kept casting doubt over our social media posts. After several tries, Chris Reardon eventually replied by text, and when asked if the man was an ambassador, Reardon replied “I confirn that he is not in a[sic] Ambassador uniform and that a picture of him is not of concern. Have a good night.”
A bizarre text exchange also did not confirm whether the aggressive heckler was an ambassador.
The event ended with a sense of hope. Activists marching in the protest continued to emphasize that individuals have the power to create ripples of change. And before the protesters went their separate ways, a member from the crowd was called upon to chant cheers, and all the audience embraced the enthusiasm from their peers.
Bob Conrad from This is Reno followed up by interviewing the marketing manager for the Business Improvement District called the Downtown Reno Partnership and got this quote below for an updated article:
This made us think of many other instances, where employees are not direct hires, which is then used as an extra layer away from accountability, such as the contractor who pepper sprayed a man who didn’t get out of bed fast enough at the current temporary big tent shelter.
We sent a message on the general Streetplus page, which has its closest offices in San Francisco but did not hear back yet. Here was our message: “The Our Town Reno reporting collective is looking into a downtown Reno ambassador who engaged in threatening conduct at a protest last Saturday, both in uniform and then returning shirtless, and we were wondering if Streetplus has a comment about this. Is training sufficient for ambassadors to deal with protests? What type of training do they get before going out in the community and do you believe it's sufficient? Some protesters were confused by their uniform as they had not encountered them before. Has that been a problem before and is that under review? Thank you for your time.”