‘Threat’ Worries Officials

Mission Viejo’s mayor has asked for additional police presence at today’s City Council meeting, after a man issued what some city officials described as “a veiled threat” against three council members.

The man, who police would not identify, showed up at City Hall on Wednesday inquiring about the council’s office hours. He asked a secretary “how she kept the City Council alive,” according to an e-mail that City Manager Dan Joseph sent to the council.

The man went on to say three of the members “needed to not be” alive and that “one of these days, someone was going to take care of them,” Joseph’s memo said.

The man returned to City Hall the next day and met with Councilwoman Gail Reavis. She said Saturday that he was “just a nice man who was fed up with the status quo. He did not make a threat, he just made a statement.”

She said she did not know why the man had come to see her during office hours but they chatted and she did not feel threatened.

Sheriff’s deputies questioned the man and determined he was not a threat, said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “It really was nothing,” he said. “It was just a misunderstood statement.”

Still, the incident shook up some people at City Hall.

“I’m troubled that it’s being taken so lightly,” Mayor William S. Craycraft said, adding that he’s taking the matter “very seriously.”

“It reminded me of the incident in Riverside a [few] years ago,” he said.

In October 1998, Joseph Neale Jr. shot at Riverside City Council members, wounding the mayor, four council members and three police officers in the rampage. Neale, a disgruntled former part-time city worker, was convicted last year of attempted murder and sentenced to multiple life terms in prison.

Some Mission Viejo council members suggested a metal detector be installed in the council chamber.

Craycraft said three uniformed police officers will be at Monday’s meeting. Usually, there’s just one.