Freedom’s Test, or Just a Pest?

After greeting the San Bernardino County supervisors with a mock Nazi salute, Jeff Wright, a homeless Air Force veteran, stepped to the public microphone to complain about being arrested at a regional transportation meeting a few months earlier.

Board Chairman Dennis Hansberger told him to stay on the topic under discussion, which was the salaries of county attorneys. Wright then threatened to seal the supervisor’s mouth with duct tape, which he had brought with him.

Hansberger responded by ordering sheriff’s deputies to eject Wright, who was led out of the building in handcuffs, screaming about police brutality.

It was nothing new -- for Wright or for the board of supervisors.

The March incident was among the more than 100 arrests or ejections deputies have carried out at meetings of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors since 1989, according to an unofficial tally by one local activist.

Although law enforcement officials say they cannot confirm the exact number, they put the tally in the dozens.

In 2000, reports of those arrests earned the Board of Supervisors the “Black Hole” award, a dubious distinction given by the California First Amendment Coalition to public agencies and officials that the group says show disregard for open government and 1st Amendment rights.

In the past year, the pace of arrests and removals at San Bernardino County supervisors’ meetings has increased to about one per month, with most speakers being removed for failing to stick to the agenda and then refusing to surrender the lectern.

“I haven’t heard of anybody nearly as restrictive as San Bernardino County,” said Terry Francke, general counsel for the California First Amendment Coalition.

Are the arrests and ejections an example of government repression against citizens who dare to question their elected leaders? Or are these incidents simply a testament to the number of fanatical and belligerent speakers in San Bernardino who are drawn to the weekly board meetings? The answer depends on whom you ask.

Francke and other civil rights experts warn that, regardless of the speakers’ temperament, the arrests stifle free speech and discourage citizens from bringing grievances before their elected officials.

“If you are a member of the Board of Supervisors, you have to be willing to listen to your constituents and give them some leeway to say what they want to say,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California. “Even if they are pests, they shouldn’t be arrested.”

But supervisors and law enforcement officials say most of the people arrested or removed intentionally try to disrupt the meetings with their outbursts and long-winded diatribes.

Hansberger said he respects the public’s right of free speech but described some of the meeting regulars as “people who bring their own anger to the only forum where they can speak.”

The arrests and removals in San Bernardino County have involved about a dozen regulars, some of whom are known to pepper the board with nonsensical ravings. They get the boot so often that the dozens of binder-toting bureaucrats who regularly attend the meetings hardly raise an eyebrow.

But government officials throughout the country have learned that efforts to silence persistent gadflies can backfire.

In Middletown, Conn., retired shoe store owner Sidney Libby had been arrested more than 25 times, mostly on disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing charges. During council meetings, he often accused city leaders of being puppets of a shadow government run by the CIA, the mob and the state of Israel. But before he died two years ago, Libby won a number of open meeting complaints that he had filed with a state ethics panel.

In Louisiana, the state attorney general’s office came to the defense of Stanford Caillouet, a caustic gadfly in St. Charles Parish who was indefinitely banned from council sessions after he called the chairman “Little Hitler” six years ago. The action caused such a furor among free-speech advocates that the council was ultimately pressured by the attorney general to open its doors to Caillouet, a retired industrial worker.

In Ventura, gadfly Carroll Dean Williams turned the tables on city leaders in the early 1990s. Denied an opportunity to speak at a council meeting, he convinced the chief of police to order an officer to arrest then-Mayor Richard Francis -- who was quickly released, and never prosecuted. The council responded by adopting strict limits on testimony from the public.

Advocates of the 1st Amendment note that several other cities and counties throughout Southern California have recently imposed tight restrictions on speakers.

Last year, Riverside adopted an ordinance that allows the council to remove speakers for hissing or using profanity or insulting language during a meeting. In July, the Corona City Council adopted a similar ordinance that allows speakers to be barred from any city meeting if they become boisterous or make “personal, impertinent or slanderous remarks.”

Still, many local governing boards indulge loud or unruly gadflies.

For years the Orange County Board of Supervisors has endured rants and charges from a man who insists that his name is Will B. King and who has been known to attend meetings wearing a fluffy skirt, fishnet stockings, white pumps and a brassiere stuffed with oranges. Orange County officials say deputies have ejected King from a meeting only once -- for raising his voice -- and they believe he has been the only person removed from the chambers in the last six years.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which has its share of gadflies, allows individuals to speak on non-agenda items only once every 90 days. There is no restriction on people who want to talk about an item on the agenda -- as long as they speak their piece in three minutes.

County officials said they cannot remember a speaker being arrested at a board meeting in nearly 10 years.

“We have a pretty loose standard for what is ‘on topic,’ ” said Joel Bellman, a longtime aide to Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors has a reputation for having little patience for long, often repetitive testimony during the weekly meetings.

Supervisors even cut off testimony from their own department heads. According to meeting records for the last few months, the board adopts nearly 90% of its meeting items by placing them on the consent calendar, which does not require a public hearing.

In San Bernardino County, most of the arrests and ejections have been requested by the board chairman for such offenses as exceeding the three-minute speaking limit, failing to stick to the agenda topic or making unsolicited comments from the gallery.

A former Needles councilwoman in the audience was arrested after denouncing plans to transport radioactive waste through the county. A few years ago, an Upland attorney was arrested for trying to sing and play an accordion in lieu of her public testimony.

Robert Nelson, a retired systems analyst from Summit Valley, has been arrested or removed from the chambers 36 times, according to notes and videotapes he has kept over the past 14 years.

Nelson, who has attended nearly every meeting during that period, often with a video camera in hand, said his records show that 101 speakers have been arrested or ejected since he began attending the meetings. Official meeting minutes and county video recordings corroborate his records.

Unlike several regular speakers, Nelson, 66, is reserved and almost professorial when he speaks to the board. But he has often exceeded the time limit.

“What’s happening here is that they don’t want anyone standing up and claiming the rights you have under the 1st Amendment,” he said.

Wright, on the other hand, is anything but reserved. Three years ago, city officials in San Bernardino sought a restraining order to keep Wright away from Mayor Judith Valles after he yelled at her following a public meeting, coming within inches of her face.

A judge rejected the request after Valles testified that she didn’t fear Wright and hadn’t been harassed by him before.

Wright has spent a total of more than a year in jail over the last few years for several charges of disrupting public meetings.

Then there is Grace Lester, a 63-year-old grandmother from Yucaipa, who routinely charges that San Bernardino County Supervisor Hansberger is leading a worldwide racketeering scheme.

In August, Lester was in the middle of her signature rant when Hansberger lost his patience and ordered her to stick to the agenda topic or leave.

Lester refused and plopped down on the floor, prompting Hansberger to order two sheriff’s deputies to move in. Lester was handcuffed and led away screaming.

Deputies have arrested Lester three times in the last five years. She is threatening to sue to the county over the most recent arrest.

“He doesn’t want the people of San Bernardino County to be informed,” Lester said of Hansberger.

Hansberger and law enforcement officials say many of the speakers who have been arrested or removed have willfully ignored the meeting rules and caused noisy disruptions.

“Frankly, we would give them a lot more time if people would come prepared,” he said.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Sgt. Tom Hornsby, who oversees security for the meetings, said he believes that the supervisors have shown restraint.

He noted that most of the arrests and removals involved the same small group of speakers.

“My personal opinion is that the board is being reasonable and has not been heavy-handed and restrictive,” he said.

But when deputies arrest a speaker, prosecutors rarely file charges.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Webster said he has declined to prosecute most of the arrested speakers because they typically only violate meeting rules and cause only a brief disruption.

Former Dist. Atty. Dennis Stout made the same assessment in a 2000 letter to the First Amendment Coalition.

He said he reviewed more than 100 arrests of speakers at the county and at several city council meetings over a six year period and had declined to prosecute all but about 5% because the speakers did not cause a “substantial disruption.”

Still, the arrests have discouraged some regular speakers from returning to speak before the board.

Marjorie Mikels, an Upland attorney and ex-wife of former Supervisor John Mikels, was arrested in 1998 when she tried playing her accordion in lieu of testimony about the dangerous of nuclear waste.

She said she played only a few notes before Supervisor Gerald Eaves put a stop to the song, saying music was not allowed in the chambers. She spent about six hours in jail. After she was released prosecutors declined to file charges.

“There were no rules against music. They just didn’t want to hear from me,” she said.

A few months later, Mikels’ former husband, who was the chairman at the time, ordered deputies to escort her out of a meeting because she refused to speak on only the agenda topic.

Mikels now rarely attends the meetings, saying the arrest lost her a job as a Sunday school teacher. “They are using the meeting rules to gut the 1st Amendment,” she said.