Isaac Brown
SANTA BARBARA — Sitting just a few miles north of the Santa Barbara City Limits, the unincorporated town of Isla Vista has a population approaching 28,000 souls, of whom 23,000 are a seasonally transient population of students attending either Santa Barbara City College or the immediately adjacent University of California at Santa Barbara.
The impact of this demographic phenomenon upon Isla Vista can hardly be overestimated. Evidence was clear in the events transpiring on the local streets just before midnight on September 9th. According to SBSD Public Information Officer Kelly Hoover, when deputies from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department and UCSB Police Department officers responded to a disturbance at a major Isla Vista intersection, they found “a crowd of several hundred swirling around a central group engaged in a fight.”
As officers and deputies interceded, a number of those engaged in the brawl took off running, only to encounter a phalanx of cops approaching from the opposite direction. It was at that point, when 18-year-old SBCC football player Isaac Brown appeared to be in pursuit of another person, that deputies encountered Brown and attempted to detain him “to prevent an assault.”
But Brown broke a couple of tackles and took off in the opposite direction running free… until he ran smack into two female UCSB officers who tried to once again detain him. Wanting no part of the lady cops, Brown “actively resisted their efforts to detain him,” ultimately pulling one of the women off balance, whereupon she “lost her balance and fell, striking her head against the bumper of a parked truck,” causing her to lose consciousness.
Brown then fled the scene, leaving the unconscious officer on the ground. The other officers immediately turned their attention to their downed fellow officer who was ultimately transported to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital for treatment of a concussion.
The ensuing investigation led to the issuance of an arrest warrant for Brown, who was contacted and taken into custody on September 12th and transported to Santa Barbara County Jail where he was booked on charges of resisting arrest causing serious bodily injury and dissuading an executive officer by force, with his bail set at $25,000.
Photo: Courtesy Santa Barbara County Jail Booking
