.
Please help spread the word about this incident. This issue affects all of us, and all of our rights.
I have been asked to make a statement about my arrest. Rather than focus on myself, I would prefer to focus on the matter at hand—namely, the right to petition our government and the qualification of the issue at hand. But background facts will be necessary for this statement.
For those who wish to know why I am so passionate about this issue, a statement from my husband can be read here.
Last Friday, I was arrested while circulating a medical marijuana petition in front of Mother’s Market on 19th st. in Costa Mesa. (714-549-6400 email: customerservice@mothersmarket.com)
In my opinion this was an unlawful arrest because I was in an area that had been designated as a free speech area. This is an area where there were community billboards on multiple occasions that included political flyers and also a store where petitions have been circulated in the recent past with their blessings. It is my contention, for these reasons and more, that the store was attempting to squelch free speech based on the issue and that the Costa Mesa police department aided and abetted my unlawful arrest.
California criminal code states clearly that in the case of a misdemeanor, a citizen’s arrest can only be carried out if the citizen has actually witnessed a crime in their presence.
I contend that the police did not press charges of trespass themselves because they had sound reason to believe that I had a right to be petitioning at that location. My arrest is on video, including the fact that they were not pressing charges of trespass themselves, but were facilitating Mother’s Market in pressing those charges.
As a matter of fact, during every step of the proceedings, the officer who answered my pleas said “I am not the one responsible for this arrest.”
I also suspect that they failed to advise Mother’s Market of the severity of the crime they would be committing should they be found guilty of false arrest.
Furthermore, while the police are required to accept a LAWFUL citizen’s arrest, what they do with the arrestee following the arrest is a matter of their discretion. I suspect that because the arresting officer had told me the day before (on camera) that any legal actions arising as a result of the arrest would be the responsibility of the arresting citizen (namely the manager of Mother’s Market) that they felt they could “have a field day with me” and face no consequences for their actions. Their advice to the fact that they would not be responsible for their actions came from the city attorney, Tom Duarte.
Rather than merely citing me, and releasing me with a court date to resolve the dispute, the police chose to book me to the maximum security jail in Santa Ana where I was forced to strip naked in front of a guard, denied asthma medication which I had on my person at the time of my arrest thus endangering my life, denied my phone calls to arrange my release with bail, and forced to endure cold with very little clothing for several hours while being subjected to extreme verbal and mental abuse. Some of the abusive statements were actually threatening, including “maybe you should leave town and not come back,” and “what petition were you working on? Well maybe that is why you are in here.” This is a mere snippet of the abuse and intimidation that I was subjected to once the cameras were not there to protect me. This abuse continued for more than 20 hours before my eventual release, several hours after my bail was posted.
Again, no actions can be excused regardless of perceived letter of the law. This was a false arrest.
Let me state for the record that I have absolutely no criminal record, nor have I ever been in prison. In fact, I am an active member of the community, recent graduate from UCI, journalist, and former political candidate. Hardly a hardened criminal.
So what led to this extremely intimidating behavior? I believe the city’s and store’s actions are an effort to squelch our free speech rights based on the issue—medical marijuana– even to the breaking of law and violation of other constitutional rights.
This suspicion is further supported by the fact that this city asked for the feds to come to Costa Mesa and raid collectives. Prop 215 states that it is a violation of law to involve the federal government in these matters. It would appear that they chose those who were most politically active to be the target of those federal raids. It is also possible that they flagrantly violated the Brown Act when they initiated these proceedings during a closed session.
I am not the only petitioner who has been arrested during this campaign. One of my colleagues was arrested while circulating this petition as well and had his car towed.
I have also heard many say that Mother’s is private property and that I should have just left. This is not the case in California, and it is not the merely the Pruneyard decision that gives me the right to petition at a private property that welcomes the public, it is our state constitution. I have been working at other areas, but the demographics of the rest of the city do not produce a volume of signatures adequate to qualify the issue in time. I was getting 5 stops an hour at other locations and about ten signatures an hour by district walking during evening hours. I have video of myself getting more than 20 stops in 40 minutes at Mother’s.
We face the problem of an ever shrinking area to petition the public, and this limits our ability to facilitate the process of direct democracy in California, which is our last resort to deal with a legislature and local government that no longer caters to the needs of the general public, but instead panders to special interest and big money.
I made several pleas to the city attorney to demand help with access, including the fact that I was allowed to petition on private property. My pleas were met with the argument that Mother’s was a private property and that I would be arrested if I did not leave. It was clear to me that he had not read my grievance. My unlawful arrest came after more than a week’s delay on a petition with only 6 weeks left to qualify and many requests for reasonable action.
Let me be clear that this issue applies to ALL FREE SPEECH ACTIVITIES, not just medical marijuana rights, so your rights are at risk as well whether you care about medical marijuana or not.
*********************************************
Now for the important matter at hand. The real issue is right to petition. Should any city government be able to show even the appearance of interfering with a petition that would directly affect them?
This issue needs to qualify if for no other reason than the government needs to be shown that our first amendment rights cannot be suppressed by even the slightest interference and especially not by heavy handed and dangerous tactics such as these.
I am asking for your help. I am not asking for donations for myself or my legal fees. This is something that I can handle. I am a big girl. I am asking for help to qualify this initiative so that we can show the city that “we the people” are in charge. We have a mere 20 days left to accomplish this goal.
There are several ways you can help.
1) Call the city and tell them that the community is watching their actions closely for the remainder of this drive.
(714) 754-5000
2) Volunteer to gather signatures. In fact, the proponents of this issue have offered to pay all volunteers $3 per valid signature to get this issue on the ballot because they recognize that so many people are struggling financially and can barely afford to pay their own bills, let alone give away their valuable free time. That should make it worth your time if nothing else. You can reach me by my Facebook page or by email at votedebbie@yahoo.com. You can also contact www.bythepeopleproject.com
3) Donate to the initiative’s PAC at www.bythepeopleproject.com so that they can afford to pay the expenses of qualifying this issue with such short time and so many hurdles. Any amount, even one dollar, will help.
And one more very important matter. I believe that positive reinforcement is every bit as effective, in not more so, than negative. Stater Brothers on Harbor Blvd. has rolled out the welcome mat for this petition because they respect free speech and our right to petition our government. We have garnered many signatures from this location thanks to concerned citizens such as your selves. Please thank them for supporting the initiative process in our city.
Sincerely,
Debbie Tharp
Welcome to Costa Mesa…
Thanks for the update and fortunately is sounds like you are out of jail. I congratulate you on standing up for what you believe in. Question: since you did not have ID were the cops pretty much required to arrest you and take you into custody? It seemed like the person filming was advising you as such…did you choose to go to jail?
On a separate yet related note, I believe that the feds may very well go after the medical dispensaries based utilizing the tax laws in addition to what they are doing now. For those who are not officially organized as a non-profit, there is a little known (at least I think it is little known) tax law that denies all deductions under Sec 280E. Essentially, if a dispensary is not a non-profit, they may very well be paying taxes on their net income after the deduct business expenses such as rent, payroll, office supplies, utilities, etc…yet under the Code, those are not good deductions due to the illegal nature of the activity on the federal level and the IRS can come after them. If any dispensaries are not officially organized as non-profits, they should beware.
As an American citizen, you are not required to produce identification unless you’re operating a motor vehicle. Refusal to do so is not a crime. You could look it up. In our Constitution.
Wish you were right about that, Anita, pretty sure you’re not. My brother Danny got arrested a couple years ago in San Francisco; he shouldn’t even have been, it was a drug bust on people in other rooms in the house, and all he had with him in his room was some prescription meds for an operation he’d just had, but they arrested him anyway.
And then he was stuck in jail for a week – over Christmas! – because he didn’t have an ID on him when they arrested him. IT IS PART OF THE PATRIOT ACT, as I mentioned while filming that arrest video of Debbie.
I’m no Horace Rumpole, but the precedent lies in the Constitution’s unreasonable search-and-seizure prohibition and in subsequent case law. Some states (California ain’t one of them) do have Draconian “stop and identify” statutes, but the cops must have a good reason for demanding I.D., i.e., must reasonably suspect you’ve committed a crime. This didn’t happen with Ms. Tharp, because the cops — to their credit — knew she wasn’t breaking any law. They were forced to arrest her because Mother’s conducted a spurious citizen’s arrest, right?
There are lots of ways that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional. Too bad Republicans and Democrats alike keep renewing it.
I dunno, I never read the whole patriot act, but my SMART brother Crab said that it was part of that that kept my crazy brother Danny in jail for not having his ID. And when I said that on the video one of the CM cops agreed with me. Said, “Yep.” You can’t really hear it.
I’ve had a couple of friends get stupid tickets for jaywalking, or vagrancy, etc, and the more laws that come down the more chances you have to participate in the system. Even Bicyclists are required to have ID on them, in case of emergency or if they break the laws, then the arresting officer can then issue a ticket. When the arresting officer issues a ticket, if you refuse to sign, or sign in a name that is obviously false, i.e. “Daffy Duck”, any officer will and should arrest you on the spot. When an officer is citing you, he is actually arresting you, but with your ID and signature, you are promising to either show up in court or take care of cet matter in one way or other. Refusing to sign, no ID, giving false info, all and more lead to immediate arrest and hearing following day in front of judge as to “WHY” you were unable or unwilling to comply. This hearing is not to establish guilt or sentence, it is only to establish ID, that you are who you say you are.
I even had a buddy get a wreckless driving ticket while driving his off-road motorcycle at an OHV off highway vehicle area. He had no ID because he had a DUI and his license was physically taken away for 6 months. He was blowing off some steam at Carnagie OHV area next to the track area and was approached and cited by a park ranger. The first thing he was asked for was his license, and he didn’t have one. The ranger did not know what to do so he cited him and let it go with that. My buddy fought ticket and won.
Point to the whole story is save your fight till your day in court, never try to beat down arresting officer, it can only get worse…
It certainly is a shame that our current system, whether constitutional or not, requires the production of ID. I can see many circumstances due to no fault of their own, that this can really bite someone hard. Other times, it seems that maybe someone wants to make a real statement by not just signing the ticket and producing ID, that going to jail is part of the desired result in order to get results and action.
Not sure which one this is…
She was willing, though not eager, to go to jail, as the first part of changing Mothers’ and Costa Mesa’s policies.
But she didn’t mean to be without an ID; she didn’t realize that people now need one. We had to go find her ID in her van and bring it to her at the jail. Not part of the plan.
Yeah and once you are in jail, I am sure it is tough to get out too- hard to unring that bell.
The other tough thing is that they did not let you take her “stuff” including presumably the sigs that she had collected that day- tougher to make the ballot when the signatures are “evidence”.
Hopefully you guys have your case going forward against the manager- does seem like it was quite possibly a public access place considering the other sig gatherers who historically are there and the public advertising kiosk…the slippery slope between private property and public access/free speech zones.
God help me, while looking for a photo for a story, I just came across Art Pravda’s take on the Debbie Tharp arrest. This line stopped me cold:
“[F]reedom doesn’t mean inconveniencing others.”
Could some actual libertarian please put Art through basic training?
I got sucked into commenting on that piece because it was so terrible, and insulting not only to me (which was his intention) but also to Debbie (which I don’t think WAS) … making me out to be her evil controlling svengali. So, all my criticisms of it are up there. Except this one: He kept repeating that she was “desperate” to get the signatures, as though she was desperate for the little bit of money she’s making collecting. No, she was and is HELLBENT to get the required amount of signatures to qualify this measure in time.
Just whenever you think Art can’t possibly suck more, he sucks even more.
I am thinking of asking an intern to count all of the times that Art mentions other bloggers and the times that other bloggers mention Art, and compare them, as well as which are conversation initiators and which are responses to another mention. I’ll bet that it’s off the charts with him trying to provoke people (other than the dingbats that frequent his site) into engaging with him.
I love that my making Stanley go away if he’s going to be massively bigoted becomes “OJB’s crackdown on free speech.” Art’s still welcome to blog here; I am banned from there; so who is “cracking down”?
I’m about one frayed nerve away from reposting that Drudge’s Mother pic that made him call you whining to please please take it down.
If we can think of a way to do that without drawing more attention to him … how would that work?
Apparently we’d have to do it without “inconveniencing others.”
“I am thinking of asking an intern to count all of the times that Art mentions other bloggers and the times that other bloggers mention Art, and compare them…”
Well, actually I think our hard-working intern will find that the Liberal OC is still obsessed with Art, as much as he’s obsessed with getting attention.
Twenty hours in jail for refusing to sign a . . . TICKET? I got a 502 in 1981 on the 405 — a far, far worse offense — and was released OR in two hours. No shower, no cavity search, no orange jump suit. I spent the whole time in the tank. They processed me and released me. Clearly, Ms. Tharp’s arrest and detention was grossly punitive. And highly suspicious. And were I a beat cop, Tom Duarte (or Jones and Mayer) would be the last person I’d consult on any legal issue.
Clearly, the jailers were given the word that Debbie was a “troublemaker.” But these folks don’t know who they’re messing with.
This case is progressing now on several levels, wish I could say more now, maybe I can tomorrow!
For now, everyone in Costa Mesa should look for that petition and sign it just on principle, even if you intend to vote no on the referendum!
Sign the petition, do you have to print your name and address too?
I have noticed that the SA petition, where they listed the names and addresses of the pot shops and the king pins, all the pot shops have been closed.
Hey, what happened at the arraignment?
no arraignment yet. they are putting it off til sept 23rd. presumable trying to decide what to do about the giant mess they got themselves into. LOL Anita Bonghit, I sincerely love your comments. Thank you for your common sense 😀
A Sunday arraignment? Can’t be right…