With the annual Hollister Independence Rally just two months
away, the Hollister City Council has been scheduling closed-door
meetings with Police Chief Jeff Miller to discuss police staffing
levels and strategies to keep three-day event safe.
Hollister – With the annual Hollister Independence Rally just two months away, the Hollister City Council has been scheduling closed-door meetings with Police Chief Jeff Miller to discuss police staffing levels and strategies to keep three-day event safe.
The council and chief are meeting behind closed doors under a Brown Act Open Meeting law provision that allows for closed session meetings on “imminent threats to public services or facilities.” An open meeting law expert says that it is likely a valid use of the act which is designed to keep most government meetings open to the public.
Miller’s discussions with the council involve levels of police staffing and contingency plans for protecting the 100,000 or so motorcycle enthusiasts who attend the rally – sensitive information that local officials say could cause trouble if it fell into the wrong hands, he said.
“You don’t want the information getting out to the people you’re trying to protect the community from,” said City Manager Clint Quilter. “If there are folks out there that plan on causing trouble, you don’t necessarily want them to know this stuff.”
The council won’t be releasing numbers for how many officers will be on-duty at this year’s rally for the same reason, according to Miller and Quilter.
“They want to kind of keep this stuff quiet so the gangsters don’t know how many police we have,” Councilman Robert Scattini said. “That’s why they’re trying to keep a cap on it. If you say you’re going to have 50 police officers, if somebody’s going to come in and raise hell, they could say ‘Well, they’re not going to have enough officers to take care of us.'”
Despite being on the verge of cancellation last year when the rally committee learned it might not have enough police officers to man the event, HIRC President Dave Ventura said yesterday a police shortage shouldn’t be a problem at this year’s rally.
“I feel we’re over-policed based on other rallies that I’ve gone to; we have more police at ours than at other events,” he said. Last year, the rally got at least 22 additional police and California Highway Patrol officers from outside Hollister in addition to the city’s full police staff. “I went to Laughlin this year (for its motorcycle rally) and that’s one where they actually have had some killings, and they still had less police than we do. But I don’t think (the city) is trying to run us out of business. I think that they are the experts and that’s what they feel they need to do.”
Last year’s Hollister rally was relatively calm, with a decrease in arrests over the previous year and the most serious crime being a non-fatal stabbing. Still, said Councilman Brad Pike, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
“We’re trying to make sure we have the proper security staffing. That’s the bottom line,” said Councilman Brad Pike. “Any time you’ve got a crowd of that size, you have to err on the side of caution; risk vs. gain. We never know how many people are going to show up and we need to make sure that we’ve accounted for that.”
The rally committee meets with Miller and Police Captain Bob Brooks once a month, Ventura said, and even the committee members don’t know the details of their security plan.
“They can’t tell us everything for security reasons and I don’t blame them,” Ventura said.
Although the council’s closed session meetings are usually limited to cases of pending litigation and personnel matters, the secrecy surrounding the rally security discussions probably is not a violation of California open meetings law according to California Newspaper Association Freedom of Information lawyer Jim Ewert. Under the government code that applies to closed session meetings, public threats are usually determined at the local government’s discretion.
“The language in (Government Code Section) 54957 is pretty broad in terms of what qualifies a threat to public safety, and given the fact that there have been several accidents in the past where people have been injured in that event, courts would probably defer to the council and the local agencies as to what constitutes a threat,” he said.
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at [email protected].
