The court cases of a man and two women arrested after disruptions got out of hand during a Jacksonville City Council meeting have been resolved: Two have been found guilty and one case was disposed.
The lone felony charges were against 30-year-old Conor Cauley. On Wednesday, May 20, he was found guilty of battery on a law enforcement offices and resisting an officer without violence. Cauley faces up to five years in prison when Judge Mark Borello sentences him at a later date, according to the State Attorney’s Office.
In April a 25-year-old woman was found guilty of resisting an officer without violence to his or her person and resisting a police officer, both misdemeanors. She also is awaiting sentencing. And earlier this month, the state decided not to prosecute the other 26-year-old woman who was charged with resisting. Since their cases were misdemeanors, the Times-Union is withholding their names.
The incident received a lot of attention and caused some controversy.
During the May 27 meeting in City Hall chambers, City Council President Randy White ordered the room cleared for about half an hour after an officer pulled Cauley over a row of seats to the ground and also took the two others away in handcuffs.
According to City Council rules, the council president can order the removal of audience members who disrupt a meeting by “shouting, yelling, whistling, chanting, singing, dancing, clapping, foot stomping, cheering, jeering” and other displays of excessive noise. The rules are posted at the entrance of the meeting and on speaker cards for those who wish to address the council. They are also read aloud during meetings.
White had issued numerous warnings to attendees about causing disruptions, and “after those warnings were not heeded, he instructed officers to remove anyone from the room who caused future disruptions,” the State Attorney’s Office said.
According to Sheriff’s Office reports, police arrested the 25-year-old woman after asking her several times to leave council chambers because she had been loudly clapping during the meeting. She refused and then resisted by not putting her arms behind her back to be handcuffed until officers gained control.
Cauley, who was standing near her, began to record what was happening, protesting her arrest and stood in the aisle, preventing officers from escorting her out, the report said. The officer put his arm up to separate Cauley from the woman and attempted to direct him to back up. Cauley pushed the officer’s arm away, resulting in the officer physically removing him from the area and placing him under arrest, according to the State Attorney’s Office.
During those two arrests, the other 26-year-old woman “began to interfere and impede police efforts by physically getting in the way,” her report said. She refused to follow commands to back up and held onto a metal rail “in an attempt to elude arrest.”
Officers also found a “folding credit card knife” in Cauley’s wallet, the Sheriff’s Office said. The blade folds into a case that is about the size of a credit card.
The Jacksonville Community Action Committee took exception to the arrests of the three people affiliated with the Jacksonville Palestine Solidarity Network.
“Video footage taken by spectators at City Council shows clear excessive force,” the group said in a statement. “This is part of a trend of JSO using excessive force in their interactions with community members.”
State Rep. Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, also called for dismissal of charges.
Mayor Donna Deegan said, “We all have freedom of speech. The time to exercise that is during the public comment period of City Council meetings. The words we choose matter. Civil discourse should be just that. Civil.”
Vice President Kevin Carrico said after the meeting that a number of audience members were breaking the council rules.
“They were given some leniency in the beginning of the night, and then it got to the point where the president had no choice but to start saying we’re going to remove people who are making displays — clapping and cheering and disrupting the meeting,” Carrico said.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: 2 guilty, 1 disposed in arrests of disruptive City Council attendees
Reporting by Scott Butler, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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