Judge Puts the Pit Bull of Pomona on Short Leash

They call him the Pit Bull of Pomona, and he wasn’t about to back down in his mano a mano Thursday with Municipal Judge Jack P. Hunt.

“You’re going to have to send me to jail,” Al Ramirez, a contentious 63-year-old political gadfly and muckraking pamphleteer told Hunt. “I’m not paying any fine.”

But no one wanted to send Ramirez to jail--not even Pomona Mayor Donna Smith, the woman Ramirez has accused of offenses ranging from flashing her underwear at a City Council meeting to running a goon squad.

After Ramirez was convicted Thursday on misdemeanor charges of disrupting a City Council meeting--the third time he had faced such a charge in six months--he immediately asked for jail time because, as he put it, paying a fine would be an admission of wrongdoing.

Hunt thought Ramirez might see the benefit of putting out some cash rather than spending time in the slammer, and gave him two hours to think about the sentence. The judge said he would levy only a $100 fine and give Ramirez until Nov. 29 to pay it.

“I ask for no favors, no leniency,” Ramirez said. “You may as well send me to jail now. What I have done is a matter of conscience.”

Hunt then told Ramirez he might give him a jail sentence except for the fact that “that’s exactly what you want.”

Finally, Ramirez gave the judge an opening. He said he didn’t have any money.

The judge immediately scratched the fine, and offered Ramirez a sentence of 25 hours of community service, pointing out that surely his talents could be used in a positive way to benefit the community.

It was an offer Ramirez could not refuse.

“I think I made my point,” Ramirez said, as he walked out of court--a free man.

Ramirez, a thorn in the side of Pomona’s mayor, has made a career of making his point--and driving city officials to the limits of their endurance in the process.

Twice before, in September and October of last year, he was arrested after clashing with the mayor at council meetings. One of the charges was dropped and the other went to a jury trial that resulted in acquittal.

Ramirez passes out political tracts attacking local officials and exposing what he sees as widespread political corruption. A short, round man with an iron will, Ramirez said he remains convinced that there are conspiracies at work in Pomona on everything from protecting drug dealers to lowering property values for the benefit of developers.

His view of those he confronts: “They’re all crooks.”

Ramirez runs the Miracle Music Ministry, teaching music to evangelical ministers and offering instruction in spirituality and sexuality.

The unpleasantness before the court Thursday stemmed from a Feb. 21 council meeting when Ramirez, who was standing at the back of the chamber, interrupted a city staff member, demanding to know: “How much time does this man get?”

Ramirez, who has long complained about a rule limiting comments by each member of the audience to five minutes, was outraged that the staff member had spoken for 20 minutes. When Mayor Smith ruled him out of order, he retorted that she was out of order.

Smith ordered the sergeant-at-arms to remove Ramirez, who wound up spending the night in jail and missing a chance to speak in opposition to a general plan revision, which he said lowered the value of his house.