Update: Disruption Closes Shasta County Supervisor Chambers For Over An Hour

A private security guard under contract with Shasta County speaks to Nathan Pinkney outside the Board Chambers on August 15, 2023. Photo by Annelise Pierce.

Update 8/15/23 12:23 pm: Nathan Pinkney has left the County Administrative building after telling the crowd that sheriff’s deputies have told him he can be arrested for trespassing if he stays. He says he will contact the ACLU for further support. We have not yet received a comment from the Shasta County Sheriff’s Department.

This week’s County Board meeting erupted into chaos around 10:30 a.m., just before Board Chair Patrick Jones instructed local community member and political activist Nathan Pinkney to leave the board room.

Jones’s decision to ask Pinkney to leave came after he, along with many other audience members, repeatedly responded to a speaker from the floor. Unlike the other vocal community members, Pinkney had already received two warnings during the meeting when the crowd grew rowdy in response to the words of a public speaker. 

After disregarding a third warning, Jones asked private security to intervene, and two security guards moved to the front of the room where Pinkney sat, asking him to leave. Pinkney refused, filming the guards as they confronted him. He was surrounded by several other community members who vocally supported his choice to stay in his seat.

Two Shasta County Sheriff’s deputies in the room during the encounter between Pinkney and security did not approach him during the event, standing in their usual places along the wall at opposite ends of the board’s seats.

After about five minutes of pandemonium within board chambers as Pinkney maintained his stand-off with security, Chair Jones declared a fifteen-minute recess. Many community members immediately left the room, but Pinkney did not leave until Board Chair Jones did.

Speaking to Shasta Scout after the event, Pinkney said he stood his ground in the chambers because the Sheriff had informed him after the last time Chair Jones had him removed from a meeting that he would have been within his legal rights to stay as he had not broken any laws and was not being asked to leave by law enforcement. Tim Mapes, Shasta County Sheriff spokesperson, wrote later by email that he could not confirm this statement.

Security closed the chambers to the public, including the press, soon after. Over the next hour and a half, members of the private security team, sheriff’s deputies, County CEO David Rickert, and Acting County Counsel Matt McOmber, as well as Supervisors Chris Kelstrom, Kevin Crye, and Jones, could be seen talking together within the board chambers.

At around 12:15 p.m., Nathan Pinkney left the lobby of the county administrative building after telling the crowd that sheriff’s deputies had informed him he could face arrest for trespassing if he re-entered the meeting.

At 12:30 p.m., the county reopened the Chambers, and Chair Jones resumed the meeting issuing a brief apology for the prior disruption before inviting a presentation on jail staffing. 

Shortly after, Nathan Pinkney reentered the board room, spoke briefly to law enforcement at the back of the room, and then walked forward to sit once again in the front row of the chambers. 

The meeting concluded without further incident around 5:30 p.m.