Tag: rutherford institute

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Bad sign? Trump placards booted from NGIC parking lot

NGIC employee Mike Sienda has gotten the okay to display a smaller Trump sign on his vehicle at work, but the Rutherford Institute still wants clarification on what the spy center means when it calls this one a campaign vehicle. Photo by Eze Amos

Mike Sienda is a retired Army guy who now works as a federal employee at the National Ground Intelligence Center’s Rivanna Station, aka the “spy center.” Sienda is also a Donald Trump supporter, and at a recent rally he purchased two Trump/Pence signs and riveted them to the side of his box truck.

His efforts were not welcomed when he drove into work September 1. “They didn’t like it,” he says. “They said to take the signs down or remove the vehicle.”

Sienda went home, but he’s still fuming about the incident. “Just because I work for the government doesn’t mean I give up my rights,” he says.

Sienda says he was told he violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from on-the-job politicking. “I asked what part of the Hatch Act I was in violation of,” he says. “They couldn’t tell me.”

According to NGIC spokesperson Rita McIntosh, an employee with a “large delivery truck with a billboard-sized partisan political banner attached to it” was asked to remove the vehicle because it violated the Hatch Act, based on guidelines from the Office of Special Counsel, which has advised that the display of more than a standard-sized political bumper sticker could be a violation.

Civil libertarian John Whitehead at the Rutherford Institute isn’t so sure.

“The issue here is whether this sign should be treated as a bumper sticker or a sign being displayed at the place of work,” says Whitehead.

He notes that the U.S. Supreme Court twice has upheld the Hatch Act, which says that while an employee “retains the right to vote as he chooses and to express his opinion on political subjects and candidates,” it also provides that a federal employee may not engage in political activity while on duty, in any room or building of a federal agency, while in uniform or using a federal vehicle.

Employees are allowed to run for office in nonpartisan elections, such as the school board, and can work for political parties, but can’t wear partisan buttons on the job.

Whitehead points out that Sienda was in the parking lot, not a building, so the sign could be considered a bumper sticker. “On the other hand, the purpose of the restriction would seem to forbid subjecting federal employees to partisan signs in the workplace, and this sign might well be viewable inside the building and considered not allowable,” he says.

The Supreme Court, he adds, has not ruled that a restriction prohibiting bumper stickers would violate the First Amendment, but it has hinted that such a restriction would go too far.

Other cars in the NGIC parking lot have political bumper stickers, says Sienda. “I suspect many people I work with don’t like Trump,” he says.

Sienda, 54, has contacted the ACLU of Virginia and the Rutherford Institute. “I feel strongly about my views and I understand the Constitution,” he says. “I want to express my right to participate in the political process. This election is the most important one I’ve ever participated in.”

While he’s hesitant to drive his van back to the spy center, Sienda has ordered a Trump bumper sticker and a window decal that he’s going to put on his car.

“If you don’t exercise your rights,” he says, “you give them up.”

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Censorship or civility? Debate about new City Council procedures rages on

Photo by Rammelkamp Foto

City Councilor Bob Fenwick could be in big trouble. He spoke to a C-VILLE reporter recently about his concerns with new council meeting procedures and didn’t “explicitly” state it was his individual opinion and that he was not representing council, as required by the new rules.

“I really objected to this,” says Fenwick, who was the lone dissenter February 16 in the 4-1 vote. That was one clue he was not representing council when he spoke to C-VILLE. Ditto for the letter he wrote headlined “Freedom of speech or controlled speech?” that appeared in the March 6 Daily Progress.

That same issue contained an op-ed from activist Walt Heinecke—“Tightened grip undermines dissent”—criticizing new meeting procedures, as well as a letter from the four other councilors—“Efficiency of meetings will benefit public”—defending the new rules.

On March 9, local civil liberties organization the Rutherford Institute weighed in with a letter to council, challenging the constitutionality of the new rules. Rutherford letter to city council 3-09-2016

Forbidden behaviors such as “improper comments” and “disorderly conduct” are problems for Rutherford founder John Whitehead because of their vagueness. “They’re not defined,” he says. “Civility is another guise for censorship.”

He also notes that telling elected officials they can go to hell is protected speech, although council’s ban against profanity or vulgar language or gestures has been on the books since 2013.

In the section of the new procedures titled “Mayor as presiding officer,” Whitehead finds it particularly egregious that in the case of a disturbance, the mayor can order audio and visual equipment turned off, and he notes that nothing in the rule limits its application to city-owned equipment, “so by its plain terms it could be used by the mayor to stop citizens from using personal recording equipment,” he writes.

He says City Council has approved surveillance cameras on the Downtown Mall. “Why can’t we watch City Council?” asks Whitehead. “Why would the mayor shut down video equipment if there was a disturbance? Who is he protecting?”

City Attorney Craig Brown responded to Rutherford Institute allegations with a letter to City Council, and he disputes any notion that the new procedures are unconstitutional. “As you know, during the deliberation and discussion of this policy, there was never any suggestion that it would be used to restrain members of the media or the public in taking notes or making their own audio or visual recordings,” he says. city response to rutherford

Brown doesn’t address why the mayor needs kill-switch power over city-owned equipment.

When asked, Mayor Mike Signer says in an e-mail, “This was all about Council making our government as fair, accessible and effective for as many folks as possible. As our city attorney has advised, these new procedures are wholly consistent with the First Amendment and Virginia law. With that said, we should always be considering the effectiveness of all our policies, and these procedures, including the section you cite, should be no exception.”

Fenwick points out that the debate on the new policy took place at a Saturday work session attended by one citizen at which no public comment was allowed. “The public had no input on this,” he says.

Most bothersome for Fenwick, he says, are the lack of transparency and the lack of public participation in the new procedures. “Everything was done at once,” he says.

The new procedures nix councilors replying to citizen comments and direct them to defer to City Manager Maurice Jones’ responses, unless, at the discretion of the mayor, a councilor is recognized to respond to an individual public comment.

“I’m being silenced,” says Fenwick. He feels further stifled by another rule that now requires two councilors rather than one to request the removal of consent agenda items and placing them at the end of the meeting for discussion. “If I’m working against a 4-1 majority, it’s pretty clear I’ve got a tough row to hoe,” he says.

One thing Fenwick doesn’t object to: the three-minute limit on councilors’ comments to make the meetings more efficient and end by 11pm.

Brown finds “no compelling reason to recommend any amendments” to the new procedures, and says with the rare exception of those who have attempted to disrupt and hijack the meeting, speakers have enjoyed full exercise of their free speech rights. “The First Amendment does not compel City Council to conduct its meetings in a manner akin to ‘The Jerry Springer Show,’” he writes.

Whitehead disagrees with Brown’s assessment. “I’m a nationwide authority on this,” he says. “If they aren’t going to listen to a constitutional authority, who are they going to listen to?”

He says such policies are a national phenomenon “to keep citizen comment to a minimum,” and he cites James Madison, who said he wrote the First Amendment to protect the minority from the majority.

Asks Whitehead, “Do we want that or do we want a group of bureaucrats who don’t want improper comments?”

The new procedures went into effect March 7.

 Correction: Council will review the lottery sign-up procedure in six months, not the meeting procedures as a whole as originally reported. And Bob Fenwick should have been quoted as having a tough row, not road, to hoe.

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SWAT PTSD: Albemarle police sued for false imprisonment

Benjamin Burruss sits in the same truck he was in in 2013 when Albemarle police held him for two hours until a SWAT team exploded a flash grenade and broke his window. staff photo

How many cops does it take to check on a man when his employer is concerned that he hasn’t shown up for work?

At least a dozen, by Benjamin Marshall Burruss’ estimate.

According to his November 19 lawsuit filed in federal court, Albemarle County Police held Burruss for two hours in his truck after he said he was fine, had no intention of harming anyone and didn’t want to talk to police, then used a flash grenade, bashed in his window, hauled him out of the truck and had him committed for psychiatric evaluation for more than 72 hours.

“I didn’t understand why this was taking place,” he says in an interview at the Rutherford Institute, whose attorneys have filed suit against Albemarle County and five police officers. “It was a nightmare.”

Burruss, 58, was born in Charlottesville, graduated from Albemarle High and was employed at Northrop Grumman for 32 years, starting when it was still Sperry Marine. He had a security clearance and worked in logistics, supplying Northrop’s security products to people around the world 24-7, 365 days a year, he says.

“He was an exemplary employee,” says his attorney, Michael Winget-Hernandez. “This event put an end to his career.”

Burruss says he’d missed a few days of work because he was adjusting to medication his doctor had given him for depression. And because of marital problems, he was staying at the Comfort Inn on Pantops.

“I needed some space,” he says. And he decided to go to Montana for some bird hunting.

According to the complaint, Northrop Grumman contacted Albemarle police the morning of November 21, 2013, and asked officers to do a welfare check on Burruss. Police were told he was at the Comfort Inn, was planning to go hunting, may have a firearm but had not made any statements that he wanted to harm himself or others, says the lawsuit.

Burruss checked out of the hotel, and in the parking lot, officers in a police car said they wanted to speak to him. “I said I didn’t want to speak to them,” he says. “I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

The officers kept saying they wanted him to get out of the truck and talk to them, according to the complaint. Burruss kept saying he didn’t want to talk to them unless they had a warrant, and that he wanted to leave.

“I didn’t want to get out with all these police around me,” says Burruss. “I said, ‘I can hear you through the window.’”

Burruss had a 12-gauge shotgun in the backseat for bird hunting “in plain view with the action open,” says his attorney. “Any police would know it couldn’t be fired. That’s the safety position.”

For two hours, Burruss refused to get out of his truck and Albemarle police refused to let him leave and put a stinger under his tires, according to the lawsuit. Officer Garnett “Chip” Riley, who talked to Burruss throughout the stand-off, at one point said, “We got nothin,’” and “I got no reason to hold him,” claims
the suit.

Officer Jatana Rigsby then contacted Burruss’ wife, who also said he’d made no statements that he intended to harm anyone, according to the complaint. Kelly Burruss was told to get an emergency custody order because her husband was “acting irrationally,” says Winget-Hernandez. After seeing a magistrate and getting an ECO, she also brought police an extra key to Burruss’ truck.

Winget-Hernandez notes that the sworn petition Kelly Burruss filed has never come to light, although it’s the legal grounds for detaining Burruss. “Either it never existed or it disappeared,” he says.

Burruss told police he was tired and was going to take a nap, says Winget-Hernandez. That’s when the SWAT team exploded the flash grenade, busted his driver’s side window and yanked him out of the car, says Burruss.

“I saw four to six SWAT guys coming at me with assault rifles,” he says. “I thought I was going to die.”

Burruss was handcuffed, relieved of his pocketknife and put in a police car, still not knowing why police were detaining him and thinking it was a case of mistaken identity and that he was headed to jail, he says.

Instead, he was taken to UVA Medical Center and held for more than 72 hours.

It was afterward that his health problems began. “I started seeing counselors and was diagnosed with [post-traumatic stress disorder],” says Burruss. He struggled to sleep and with flashbacks. “I couldn’t get any of this out of my mind,” he says two years later.

“I was battered,” he says. “I was robbed. I was stripped of my family, my home, my dignity”—here his voice breaks—“and my self worth.”

Says Burruss: “To this day I don’t understand why they took the approach they did.”

He says his suit against officers Riley, Rigsby, Kanie Richardson, Robert Warfel, Captain Pete Mainzer and the county is to hold them accountable. “I hope this never happens to anybody else,” says Burruss. “I wish it hadn’t happened to me. I wish they’d been better informed and better trained. They made some terrible decisions.”

Albemarle officers receive 40 hours a year of crisis intervention training to learn to de-escalate non-violent situations, says police spokesperson Madeline Curott. They may also elect to take other mental health training. Curott says the department has not been served with Burruss’ lawsuit.

“This is just one more example of how a relatively benign situation—a routine welfare check—gets escalated into something far more violent and dangerous through the use of militarized police armed to the teeth and trained to act combatively,” says John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People.

For Burruss, along with the emotional trauma and financial impact on his family stemming from the encounter, he also had to pay for his involuntary stay at UVA Medical Center. And he has to deal with people wondering what’s wrong with him. “It’s unjust,” he says. “I’ve never hurt anyone. I’ve been violated.”