City of Santa Cruz Noisemaker Laws Capture Students

HAVE A PARTY, GO TO COURT

~ Going from being a Nuisance to becoming a Criminal ~

by Linda Ellen Lemaster for Linda's Hearth

Finally leaping into 2011 New Year spirit, I was waiting my turn in the midnight supermarket check-out line last weekend, when a group of five UCSC students que'd up behind me. All in their early 20's I'd guess? One was talking about the "noise tickets" he and his three Westside housemates received Saturday night.

He said to his grocery-shopping buddies, "yeah, we EACH have to go to court. But I think it should be easy to clear this up, since two of us were asleep in the adjacent bedrooms when the cops came, and an officer had to wake us to give us the citation."

I wish them all well in court!

The obviously bright young man was believable to me: his story seemed incredible to his buddies. I remember when that 'neighborhood versus students' law was enacted. The Santa Cruz City Council assured their packed-to-the-gills, all-ages audience that police officers would "always use their discretion," as thought this should reassure people.

Again and again, in my view, this City keeps passing innovative, reactionary and experimental ordinances, without making much parallel effort to educate residents, nor appropriately analysing actual underlying needs, nor looking into peaceful and alternative modes of resolution. Legal consequences are meted out without the City's engagement in any process that gets past the structure of upset people's complaints.

Without neighborhood involvement beyond draining bitch* sessions. Without even a hint of community interaction. And it leads to deepening a chasm build out of "them or us" expletives and curses. (Not to mention poor language that wastes time in court later, to the extent that I've heard almost every sitting judge lament the City's impact, "eating up the court's overtaxed time," as one judge said last year. I see that as another different concern.)

I believe there's a serious downside with enacting too much regulatory control over people's native and human behaviors, for they preclude citizens and their friends from even communicating without any chance to find real and inclusive solutions; and then young men become "criminals" without ever having faced their accusers. If it isn't already a "conflict" when these noise complaints are called in to the police, or when weekend gatherings get unplugged, or when the court dates arrive, it will by definition *become* adversarial when it gets to court.

Our City's laws need to fit together with each other on many levels. Passing new laws to reassure people who feel agrieved or gyped, without even clarifying and concretizing and not even testing them out and engaging with citizens in the process of hammering out legal jargon, together, makes mere criminals (and possibly expenses to County and Courts?). It also helps make people become ever-moreso dependent, and even socially and politically incompetent, as citizens and neighbors.

Is this the kind of people we want inhabiting our "built-out" yet still growing little City? It seems ill planned, to me, to set college undergraduates up to have their first run-in with "Cops and Courts" over such an arbitrary, vague and complaint-driven law.

Also, the feedback and lifestyle information that could flow from a more open and less adversarial process would be like *gold* as the City and it's municipal neighbors strive forward together, with goals of higher-rise rental housing along "service rich" arterial avenues.


Linda's Hearth note: *I feel ok about saying the B word, having been so accused and having to come to terms with this. I don't, however, appreciate when mens call womens bitches generally. So be nice!

Cranky and Free: American Speech

New York Times Editorial:

City of Santa Cruz' DECORUM vs
Robert Norse's Free Speech
May Finally Get a Real Trial

Robert Norse this year, across the board from street photographer and angel
Ronee Webster Curry, on Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz, California.
Ronee has a mission that includes bringing comfort and love to street people and
homeless folks in our town. Thank you, Ronee.

Editorial published: December 29, 2010

To the City Council in Santa Cruz, California, Robert Norse was a pest long before he sued it. An old-fashioned (and full-time) activist, he championed the city’s homeless and showed up regularly at meetings, making cranky comments and daring members to lose their cool.

Which they did, in March 2002, in an incident viewable on YouTube. As a gesture of silent protest when the Council asked someone else to stop talking, Mr. Norse raised his left arm in a Nazi salute. He was thrown out of the meeting, arrested when he refused to leave and released without charges. Mr. Norse then sued the city and Council members for infringing on his First Amendment right to sound off. But, on the eve of the trial and on his own motion, the trial judge threw out the case because, he said, the people Mr. Norse sued had official immunity.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously sided with Mr. Norse, Dec. 15. In a tart and persuasive opinion, Judge Sidney Thomas said that in ruling on his own motion — sua sponte — and without adequate notice, the trial judge had not given Mr. Norse a fair chance to be heard and had thus abused the legal process.

He also made plain that even a guy who’s a pest can count on the protections of the First Amendment. It’s all right to set reasonable time limits on public comments, Judge Thomas said. But if you have a right to be in a place, the right to free speech comes with you.

As the Ninth Circuit’s chief judge, Alex Kozinski, wrote in a concurring opinion about what he saw on the YouTube video, it “clearly shows that Norse’s sieg heil was momentary and casual, causing no disruption whatsoever.” Mr. Norse is not the only beneficiary of the appellate court ruling. All of us who value free speech, even when it is obnoxious, are stronger for it.

Linda's Hearth note: Earlier article in blog shares the so-called "objective" journalism version of this news. In short, per Linda's Hearth, the Ninth Circuit's Appeals Court sent Norse's claim against the City BACK for trial, as the prior judge just skipped over court rules in favor of giving City Councilmembers "immunity", but forgot to check out the facts of the case.

A version of this editorial appeared in print on December 30, 2010, on page A28 of the New York edition.

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