It's About Disruption, Not Just Violence

David Gantt "apologized" yesterday for this.   His unindicted co-conspirators at the Democrat and Chronicle today morphed Gantt's superficial contrition into a headline that the County "made up" claims of threatened violence at Tuesday's legislature meeting.   In reality, the very words for which bad publicity compelled Gantt to "apologize" reveal that violence was in the front of his mind.

Yet let's suppose that threats of violence, whether real or perceived, were not an issue, in any way, in planning for Tuesday's meeting.   Even so, the County Legislature did exactly the right thing with its security measures.

New York's Open Meetings Law creates the right to attend a public meeting.   It does not create a right to disrupt a public meeting

Disrupting is just what David Gantt and his rent-a-mob did last Saturday at a legislative committee meeting.   That made it reasonable for leaders of the legislature to think that Gantt and Co. would try the same thing again.

Which is precisely what the Abominable Assemblyman did at the Legislature's meeting on Tuesday, shouting down the presiding officer as the meeting was being gaveled into session.   He could have spoken at the public forum, but the autocrats of our state Assembly aren't used to things like waiting, or not getting their way.   (That's for us little people.)

So even if threatened violence had not been an issue -- and, of course, it was, big-time, as Gantt's parting remark demonstrated so extravagantly -- County Legislators did the right thing by having enough deputies present to prevent or stop disruption of the meeting by a crowd.   A reasonable preparation, since a crowd had disrupted its meeting three days before.

Our fellow blogster, Lucy, on Tuesday made a point about complaints over the security arrangements .   And surely it's somewhere in Rules for Radicals :  

Create the need for a high level of security, then complain bitterly about the security.

If Gantt, his mob, and the leftist flotsam at Tuesday's meeting demonstrated one less shred of integrity, they'd be eligible to write for the Democrat and Chronicle.