Recluse Again Faces Charges of Shining Mirror in Pilots’ Eyes

For the second time in two years, a 72-year-old recluse angry over noise faces a jail term for allegedly using a mirror to reflect sunlight into the eyes of pilots flying over his trailer home in the Antelope Valley community of Llano.

Alcide J. Chaisson could serve as much as a year in County Jail for his second violation of a state law that prohibits interfering with airport traffic, said Stephen Cooley, head of the district attorney’s office in Lancaster.

Chaisson--whose trial is scheduled Friday--was arrested in November after pilots from nearby Crystalaire Airport complained to Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies. He admitted using the mirrors to sheriff’s deputies, the sheriff’s report said.

Authorities said Chaisson’s mirrors could cause a crash or midair collision by obstructing the vision of pilots. Crystalaire Airport, a private facility, serves small-craft pilots.

The sheriff’s report said Chaisson told investigators that “his civil rights were being violated by airplanes continually flying over his trailer, shaking it and making noise.” Chaisson vowed to continue using his mirror until flights ceased over his house, which is about 12 miles east of Palmdale.

Chaisson pleaded no contest to the same violation in April, 1990, and was sentenced to 180 days probation and 45 days of community service by Antelope Municipal Judge Frank Jackson.

“He was told back then if he couldn’t handle the air traffic in the community, his option was to move,” Cooley said. “He was given probation so he could straighten himself out. He is obviously a nut case.”

But Chaisson--a long-haired retired contractor--was sufficiently savvy to hire as his defense counsel one of the state’s leading airport experts, former Santa Monica City Atty. Richard L. Knickerbocker, now in private practice in Woodland Hills.

During the 1970s, Knickerbocker defended Santa Monica in several lawsuits filed first by homeowners angry over airport noise and then by airport users objecting to the city’s airport noise regulations.

Knickerbocker said he will argue that the law being used against Chaisson does not apply to people standing on the ground but is intended to restrict pilots from interfering with each other. Knickerbocker said county authorities should consider drafting an airport noise ordinance for the area instead of prosecuting Chaisson.

“Noise will drive people crazy,” he said.