Arrest Request Enlivens City Council Meeting

Cooperative independence’ seen as best
approach to join in fight against truck traffic

By Nao Braverman
Ventura County resident Carol Dean Williams strutted to the City Hall podium at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting and told the City Clerk Carlon Strobel that he was going to arrest her, to the dismay of council members.
“Any person who reports to a police officer that a crime has been committed can make a citizen’s arrest and she has committed a crime,” he said. “I have a recording of it right here.”
But by the time Williams had exhausted his three minutes of public comment, he had not made clear the crime of which he was accusing her.
Ojai Police Capt. Bruce Norris came to the podium and clarified that no such arrest would be made.
Up until recently, the penal code mandated that law enforcement take any citizen’s arrest. Though the validity of the arrest would be determined in court, the initial arrest was required. But a supplement added in 2002 gives officers the discretion not to accept the citizen’s arrest, said Norris. In this case he did not find an appropriate cause for arrest.
Strobel explained later that Williams had visited the City Hall earlier regarding his concern about the flood control berm west of the San Antonio Creek that is currently being raised to safe guard Casitas Springs from flooding. He was concerned that raising the berm would endanger a nearby bridge, she said.
When he asked Strobel if the city would intervene, she told him to speak with the city manager to see if he would consider placing the item on the agenda, according to Strobel. Then he got very upset and pulled out his tape recorder, she said
“I think that’s when he got sidetracked.” she explained.
After an extended, slightly confrontational conversation at City Hall that day, Williams had been escorted out of the administrative office by Norris, said Strobel. That incident, she speculated, was the cause of his attempted citizen’s arrest at the meeting Tuesday night.
In other City Council news, council members directed city staff to continue to work on the issue of Ojai’s gravel truck traffic independently but in cooperation with the citizen’s group, the Committee to Stop the Trucks.
Council members had agreed that the city should get involved in the battled against increasing truck traffic in mid-June. On Tuesday they decided that “cooperative independence” was the best approach, to start.
Other ways to address the gravel truck issue would be to offer a cash contribution to the citizen’s group. Such a donation would not be considered a gift of public funds as long as the city could show that the gift would have a definite effect on the community. City manager Jere Kersnar explained that such an effect could be demonstrated.
Kersnar also offered the option of creating a consortium but warned that it might be difficult to administer and might require a long-term commitment from the city.
Also during the meeting S.A.F.E. Coalition representative Ruth Cooper announced that the percentage of local 11th-graders being very drunk went down 16 percent since 2002 and the percentage of 11th-graders being under the influence of drugs or alcohol at school went down by 10 percent, according to a California Healthy Kids Survey. Ninth-graders under the influence of drugs or alcohol at school went down by 6 percent. A 2007 survey of seventh-11th graders showed an overall increase in substance abuse among seventh graders however.
The S.A.F.E Coalition plans to focus on implementing and enforcing the new Social Host Ordinance which penalizes anyone hosting a party with underage drinkers and educate parents in substance abuse prevention particularly among young teens, said Cooper.