Trash Can Dissident in a Fine Mess

It’s the oldest story in the courthouse: The lady doesn’t want to do hard time, so cops a plea.

For Linda Davis, that means she won’t have to crack rock and make license plates before dragging into her cell at night to knit sweaters for the grandkids.

Still, it gets under her skin: In exchange for her so-called freedom, Davis had to turn her back on principle and knuckle under to Simi Valley Municipal Code 6-3.12c.

So now she stashes her trash cans in her backyard, just like all the other law-abiding citizens in the nation’s safest city.

She worries about what that means for us as a society.

“It kind of disappointed me,” she said. “‘We’re losing a lot of our rights little by little.”

Before last February, the closest Davis ever came to America’s Most Wanted was a parking ticket. That’s her story and she’s sticking to it, and I see no reason to doubt it. A 51-year-old grandmother who does data entry for a large company in Simi Valley, Davis seems as reasonable as the person next door.

But when it comes to Municipal Code 6-3.12c, she displays the kind of don’t-tread-on-me independence that sends bureaucrats groping for the statute books and the Tums.

For 25 years, Davis has lived in a house on Agnew Street. As long as she can remember, she has set her trash cans between her garage and a vine-laden chain-link fence, in a nook visible from the street.

Unfortunately, that’s the very behavior prohibited by Municipal Code 6-3.12c. In Simi Valley, it is a misdemeanor to allow the public to gaze upon your trash cans, except from 4:30 p.m. the day before pickup to 10 p.m. the next night.

Now it takes no great investigative skill to drive through Simi Valley and spot trash cans brazenly displayed, despite Municipal Code 6-3.12c. But, drawing a line in the trash, Simi’s code enforcement officers sweep through the city periodically, issuing friendly reminders about the law.

In a blitz of the Agnew Street neighborhood, city officials said they discovered 49 families violating Municipal Code 6-3.12c. Forty-eight of them later stowed their cans elsewhere--but not Davis.

“For 25 years, that’s where they’ve been,” she said. “It was a point of principle.”

Davis gathered evidence. She took photos of other homes with trash cans flagrantly--and, she contends--permanently visible. She told the city that an empty can spotted on her property in fact had been blown there by a strong wind.

But officials were unsatisfied. Warnings were given. Ultimatums were issued. Davis was told that she’d need to build an enclosure for her cans, but she said she couldn’t afford it.

“Basically, they pressed it,” she said. “I thought it was ridiculous.”

Predictably, that wasn’t a view shared at City Hall.

“We had just two alternatives,” said Assistant City Atty. Stephen Millich. “We could ignore the law and let her keep her cans out--in which case the neighbors would complain to us about her--or we could go ahead and enforce the law. It was a simple situation of enforcing the law.”

Davis pleaded not guilty at an arraignment earlier this month, but last week, she caved. Faced with seven misdemeanor counts and a maximum fine of $1,000 and six months behind bars for each, she did what a less principled person like myself would have done at the outset: She moved her cans.

“They’re on the patio now,” she said. “It’s kind of a hassle to take them into the backyard, because the gate doesn’t work that well.”

On top of that, Davis has to pay the city $430 for its enforcement efforts. If she keeps her cans hidden and otherwise abides by the Municipal Code, the city will dismiss the case against her next March, officials said.

Davis said she has no “words of wisdom” on this sorry episode.

Neither do I. I thought about the high-minded Henry David Thoreau--what column on civil disobedience and trash would be complete without recycled Thoreau?--but I think Kenny Rogers put it best:

“You got to know when to fold ‘em . . . “

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.