South Gate Mayor Slugs Councilman

South Gate Mayor Xochilt Ruvalcaba, in what was probably her final City Council meeting before being ousted from office, punched a rival councilman Monday night, stunning the standing-room-only crowd in a troubled city where federal authorities have subpoenaed city documents in their ongoing corruption probe.

The blow, an overhead right that struck Councilman Henry Gonzalez in the cheek, came after a Superior Court judge blocked Ruvalcaba and her outgoing council allies from awarding more than $1 million in federal funds in a ruling issued earlier in the day.

Some of the money had been earmarked for a businessman with ties to City Treasurer Albert Robles, who along with Ruvalcaba and two City Council members were voted out of office by ratios of 8 to 1 in a recall election last week.

South Gate police cited Ruvalcaba for misdemeanor battery after the meeting. She, in turn, made a citizen’s arrest of Gonzalez, 67, whom she said fondled her breast in a tussle over a document.

Gonzalez denies reaching for her breast, calling the charge ridiculous.

“We didn’t see it,” said Lt. Vincent Avila of the mayor’s accusation. Avila was present when the altercation took place.

Monday night, more than 200 residents packed a 140-seat-capacity City Hall chamber to cheer the departure of Robles and his allies.

Less than 15 minutes into the meeting, with the overflow crowd already jeering the mayor, Ruvalcaba tried to bar a resident from addressing the council, saying that she did not have a formal request to speak from him. The resident, Bill DeWitt, produced a date-stamped document indicating that he had filled out a speaker’s card. The city attorney informed the mayor that he should be allowed to speak.

As the crowd yelled: “Let him talk! Let him talk!” Ruvalcaba banged her gavel, called a five- minute recess and headed into closed chambers with DeWitt’s document in hand. At that point, Gonzalez attempted to intervene, reaching for the document and telling Ruvalcaba to give it back to DeWitt.

The crowd watched as the two officials struggled and then erupted in screams and shouts when Ruvalcaba threw a punch. The mayor then rushed into the back room as several uniformed South Gate police officers pursued her, jumping the wooden railing separating the council members and the crowd.

“Arrest the mayor! Arrest the mayor!” the crowd chanted. Noting the video cameras in use by some, a practice instituted by council critics in response to the city officials videotaping the crowd, someone called out: “Let’s go to the replay.”

“Unbelievable,” said off-duty South Gate Police Officer Tony Mendez. “Did you see that? She just popped him.”

“It’s crazy,” said Ken Louie, the city’s director of finance. “Just when you thought you’d seen it all.”

The proceedings resumed with the mayor in charge a few minutes after the altercation. Gonzalez, who was shot in the head in 1999 while mayor, a crime that remains unsolved, said during a break that the punch came out of nowhere.

“I said: ‘You shouldn’t be walking out of here with that paper, so I grabbed it out of her hand and then she hit me,” he said.

“A bullet bounced off my head so I can take a punch,” said Gonzalez, who walks with a cane. But he added that the blow stung. “She’s a good-sized woman. She can throw a punch.”

Robles, who was not in the room at the time, defended the mayor’s actions. He said the mayor’s cousin, Councilwoman Maria Benavides, told him that Gonzalez placed his hand on Ruvalcaba’s breast.

“It’s appropriate to defend yourself when a person is invaded,” Robles said. “It’s a natural reflex.”

The out-of-control meeting was the latest in a long line of troubling and occasionally violent events connected to politics in this heavily Latino city about 12 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

New city officials elected to take the place of Ruvalcaba, Benavides and Vice Mayor Raul Moriel are scheduled to be sworn in today after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors certifies the recall election results. The vote broke up a majority on the City Council that critics charged had openly worked to line the pockets of cronies.

Monday’s meeting was called at the last minute by the mayor, in a final push to set city policy. Also on the agenda: the promotion of at least 12 employees, in addition to awards of federal grants and low-interest loans.

The raucous meeting came the same day that the public learned that an FBI probe into alleged corruption had reached a critical phase, with at least one federal grand jury subpoena issued for city documents. The exact nature of the inquiry is unclear. However, one high-ranking law enforcement official said it involves the award of $4 million in federal loans and grants to a former business partner of Robles.

A jury deadlocked last year on charges that Robles had threatened four people, including allegations that he had threatened to rape a state senator and kill her husband, as well as blow the brains out of a state assemblyman.

His lawyers argued that such threats were politics as usual in South Gate and the judge dismissed the charges last month, saying that no jury could ever agree that his actions were criminal.

Gonzalez and Councilman Hector De La Torre, who have long battled the outgoing officials, made a tactical decision to vote with them on their final personnel moves. By agreeing with the promotions, the two remaining council members retained their right to reconsider and reverse the appointments at a later date.

But the council majority attempted to thwart the strategy by voting to reconsider and approve the items at the same meeting.

In response, De La Torre before each vote jumped out of his chair and left the chamber. He did this, he said, to preserve his right to reconsider the matter at the next meeting.

The last attempt by Ruvalcaba, 30, and her allies to get their way further upset an already angry crowd, which booed and jeered so loudly that the mayor’s voice on the microphone was drowned out, and city officials had to shout over the crowd to take their votes.

At that point Ruvalcaba began kicking people out of the meeting -- a practice she used often during her yearlong tenure as mayor. Each person expelled from the meeting left with a parting shot.

“I’ve got this to say before I go,” said Sam Echols, turning to the crowd as they cheered him on. “These people are going to go to jail, every one of them.”

The night proved emotional for many there who had fought to remove city officials they believed were corrupt.

“This is the best night of my life,” resident Virginia Johnson said. “Because I get to see the council majority running scared with their tail between their legs.”

Shirley Bobrick, a longtime South Gate resident against whom the mayor took out a restraining order last year, accusing the senior citizen of hitting her over the head with court documents, said she hoped that the city’s ordeal was coming to an end.

“Anybody that hires her from another city has got to be out of their minds,” said Bobrick, who denied assaulting the mayor.

Sonia Miranda, who has lived in the city for more than two decades, said the community is happy the council members have been tossed from office.

“But we will be watching closely so this never happens to us again,” said Miranda in Spanish. “The community is now awake.”