Parents Protesting School Policies Abduct Official

San Bernardino County’s high desert is full of rugged individualists, folks who are there not in spite of seclusion but because of it. Privacy is as precious as air-conditioning and many expect little more from their government than postal service and traffic lights.

Even in that setting, officials said Friday that they were floored when a pair of agitated parents this week allegedly barged into the Lucerne Valley Unified School District headquarters, handcuffed the superintendent, placed him under citizen’s arrest and kidnapped him.

The confrontation, which the couple videotaped, was an apparent protest against school policies. It marked the culmination of a dispute that has percolated for 10 years over everything from constitutional rights to health classes, from Cicero to assigned readings that the couple found disturbing.

“I have never--nor has anyone else here--seen anything like this,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Det. Norm Neiman.

Carl Williams, 45, and his wife, Kathy, 48, have been charged with felony burglary, felony kidnapping and misdemeanor battery, Neiman said. The couple have five children enrolled in the small school district.

Carl Williams remained jailed late Friday in lieu of $100,000 bail. His wife, who declined to comment when reached at her home, has been released from custody after posting $100,000 bail.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for the school district, Hector Emilio Salitrero, said Friday that he is seeking a restraining order that would force the couple to stay at least 100 yards from school officials’ homes, offices and cars.

According to court documents filed to support the request for the restraining order, the couple has grown increasingly angry with a variety of school district policies--rules that, the couple wrote, are “escorting this generation of children to a one-world government.”

For example, the couple wrote to school officials in May, some of their children have been denied recess because the Williamses refused to sign their report cards. The family has been scolded by school officials for refusing to disclose their children’s Social Security numbers, and the couple wrote that computerized records of education data amount to “Big Brother” invasions of their privacy.

Forcing the children to complete health courses before they could enroll in driver’s education, the couple wrote, amounted to “a treacherous scheme,” because the family is opposed to “outside instruction on spirituality and morality.”

The couple protested the presence of law enforcement officers on school grounds, saying it “indicates disrespect and contempt for the . . . community.” The documents also refer to a book that officials identified as Robert Cormier’s “The Chocolate War,” a book that includes sexual references and has been challenged around the country. In letters, the parents say the book is evidence that school officials are “sexual predators and know no boundaries.”

At times, it appears the couple made some headway in their protests. School officials, for instance, agreed that “students should not be denied recess because the report cards were not returned,” the court documents say.

Still, according to school officials, what was once seen as harmless carping grew increasingly threatening in recent months. After officials did not respond to a Tuesday “deadline” the Williamses had imposed on the school to respond to their demands, the Williamses took action, authorities say.

At about 10:20 a.m. Wednesday, they marched into school district headquarters, then forced their way into the office of Jim Wheeler, the district’s interim superintendent. When Wheeler told his assistants to call the Sheriff’s Department, the Williamses forced the assistants to hang up the phone, according to an affidavit Wheeler filed with the court.

The couple then followed Wheeler out of the building, according to police accounts and the affidavit, handcuffed him, placed him under citizen’s arrest and forced him into the back of their car.

“I was in fear [for] my life,” Wheeler wrote in the affidavit. He could not be reached Friday.

The couple were apparently on their way to the local county district attorney’s office when they were pulled over on Highway 18 by two sheriff’s deputies and arrested, sheriff’s spokesman Chip Patterson said. The couple had taken turns videotaping the encounter--something Patterson described as a “pretty nice bonus for prosecutors.”

Summer vacation began Friday in Lucerne Valley. The five Williams children will remain enrolled in the school system, Neiman said, and there is no evidence they have been abused or neglected in any way. The family home, where a sixth child no longer in school also lives, is tidy, Neiman said.

“They seem to be the ordinary family, as far as their home and food and all that,” Neiman said.

They were, however, obsessed with school policies, authorities believe.

“They’ve taken policies and procedures that were pretty much standard, and they have interpreted them as criminal acts . . . because of the way they are interpreting laws and the Constitution,” Neiman said. “And they felt they had the God-given right to arrest. . . . They have some strong beliefs about personal freedoms and rights.”