Battle over Rohnert Park fireworks ban: Threats, abusive comments, police patrols and fire outside councilman’s home

One councilwoman said she was called a racial slur. A resident said a man sent a threatening message, including a picture of his stockpile of firearms.

And then, late on the Fourth of July, Rohnert Park Councilman Willy Linares said he woke up to find the garbage can outside his home filled with fireworks and set ablaze.

Rohnert Park council members and community members say those instances and others are part of a pattern of threats and abuse that has inflamed an increasingly hostile divide over the future of firework sales in the city of 43,000.

The debate has played out online, where social media posts and pages dedicated to that question have at times devolved into personal attacks and alleged conspiracies.

It reached the fronts of some fireworks stands, where vendors said they were harassed by those who favor banning pyrotechnics.

And it has extended into neighborhoods, where the city’s police officers have increased patrols outside council members’ homes in response to concerns about their safety.

The three council representatives who voted for the ban say the hostility has been fueled by racial tensions and unease about a shift in political power at the top of Rohnert Park government.

Linares, one of the newly elected trio that approved the fireworks ban in late April on a 3-2 vote, publicly condemned the fire in his garbage can as a hate crime.

“As an elected official and one of the two people of color on our council that has now experienced a hate crime, my community needs me to speak up,” Linares said during a special council meeting Tuesday night about the fireworks ban. The council voted unanimously that night to move ahead with the Sept. 14 referendum election.

Fireworks sales and use went forward in the city this holiday after ban opponents managed to gather enough signatures from Rohnert Park voters over several weeks to force the city to shelve the council-approved moratorium and put the matter to a public vote.

Proponents, including Linares, Mayor Gerard Giudice and Vice Mayor Jackie Elward, describe the ban as a precaution long overdue in the face of drought conditions and extreme wildfire risks. Rohnert Park was one of only two Sonoma County cities that permitted fireworks this Fourth of July.

Opponents, however, say the ban would cut off a key source of funding for local nonprofits and sports teams. Fireworks also don’t pose the kind of wildfire risk that ban proponents describe, they say.

It wasn’t until Linares took to Instagram on July 4 to decry in a personal tone the fire outside of his home that city officials began to reveal the extent to which they experienced a raft of heated and threatening comments made on social media and emails.

Elward, Councilwoman Susan Hollingsworth Adams and Julie Royes, a Rohnert Park resident, all said they received communication that felt threatening enough for them to forward to police.

Elward said some of the comments were inflammatory, accusing her of trying to destroy the city she represents and inciting reckless use of fireworks.

Hollingsworth Adams said she reported a former resident’s threats to fill the streets with fireworks from out of state.

Royes, who rallied support for the ban through an online form, said someone opposed to the ban sent her a picture of his stockpile of guns. Other messages were extremely derogatory and misogynistic, she said.

Royes sees the new sway held by the council majority as a pivotal factor in the ongoing rift over the fireworks ban.

Though it is not the first time a Black person or a Latino person has served on Rohnert Park’s City Council, it is the first time that two of council’s current members are people of color who are also part of a voting majority that is more diverse and progressive than the city has ever seen in its 59-year history.

“For some people, it feels like they’re losing control and power to the unfamiliar last name, the different color of skin, and also to folks that they deem new residents to the city,” Royes said. “Change is really hard. But I really believe in our new leadership team and ultimately I do believe in our community.”

Opponents of the fireworks ban are mounting a campaign to preserve what they see as a valued community tradition and source of income for civic groups. They have disavowed any violence or harassment.

“We support freedom, and the legal and safe usage of safe & sane fireworks,” said Alexis Simpson, a member of the Rancho Cotate High School Music Boosters. The club is one of 17 groups that rely on fireworks sales to generate revenue for their programs. Last year, they grossed a record $698,000, according to a city estimate.

“We do not support or condone criminal acts, or harassment, whether coming from pro-ban or anti-ban individuals,” Simpson said.

This story, about the threats and abusive rhetoric that have colored the fireworks debate in Rohnert Park, is based on prior interviews with Linares and Giudice and new interviews with Elward, Hollingsworth Adams, Assistant City Manager Don Schwartz and Aaron Johnson, the longtime deputy chief of the city’s Department of Public Safety, as well as two residents on opposite sides of the incendiary issue.

Rohnert Park police have fielded complaints about threats or otherwise hostile feedback over the fireworks ban from at least four of the city’s five council members and at least one resident who said she was threatened over her support for the ban.

The latest and most visceral instance, the fire outside of Linares’ home, is under investigation by Rohnert Park police. The FBI is monitoring that investigation. Giudice said the city has forwarded other threats made at earlier stages on to the department, as well.

In the days since the special meeting, Linares and Giudice have refused to make themselves available for interviews and declined to answer additional questions about the threats they said they received since they first endorsed the ban in March.

“I’m going to ask for some space and privacy,” Linares said in a text message Wednesday declining an interview. “There’s a lot to process and I have to put my mental health first.”

Two voicemails left with Councilwoman Pam Stafford were not returned this week.

A rising tide of anger

An anonymous phone call to Elward in March was one of the initial catalysts for reinforced police patrols outside council members’ homes, according to Schwartz.

Elward is a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the first Black woman elected to the Rohnert Park council. On March 9, she joined Linares and Giudice in a vote to advance the fireworks ban to a formal council decision in April.

Within the next week, an anonymous person called her cellphone and unleashed a racist tirade against her, she said. He called her a racial slur and told her she belonged in Africa before hanging up, she said.

The call prompted Rohnert Park police officials to increase patrols around all of the council members’ neighborhoods, Schwartz said. The heightened patrols remain in effect.

Elward said she has remained vigilant since that phone call. She said she has shared with police a number of screenshots of social media discussions she believes were threatening or that targeted council members.

Elward said she could not provide The Press Democrat with the screenshots because she has deleted them from her phone.

She described comments she saw posted on Facebook and Nextdoor, the virtual neighborhood forum, that accuse her of trying to destroy Rohnert Park traditions.

“It’s not just one person that would say things like that (online),” she said. “It was too much to keep it in my phone and look at it.

“I have to talk to my kids about being safe, about certain things that some of our white council members don’t have to,” she added. “And that’s the big difference. That’s what I want my constituents to understand.”

Vocal vendor troubled council members

Elward, Giudice and Hollingsworth Adams all said they saw comments on Facebook or received troubling messages via email from one fireworks vendor based in Arizona.

Jayson Colt, who grew up in Sonoma County but now lives in Avondale, Arizona, sent private messages about fireworks and the proposed ban, the council members and a community member said. Giudice was concerned enough about Colt’s comments that he forwarded the communications to the FBI, he said.

In those particular posts, which the mayor said he received on his personal Facebook page, Colt threatened to ship “hundreds of fireworks” to Giudice’s neighborhood “to be used to bring a reign of terror down on” where the mayor lives.

Colt, reached by phone, said he never used that phrase about terror. “I’ve never threatened anybody, period,” he said. “I only made threats to fill the streets with fireworks.”

He said agents with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives visited his home in Arizona to follow up on a report he suspects Rohnert Park city officials made.

But Colt said the agents told him they were investigating an accusation that he was shipping illegal, professional-grade fireworks to California. He said he only sells legal fireworks and said the ATF verified he was in compliance with federal law.

The FBI confirmed on July 7 that they are aware of council members’ concerns about Colt’s comments. The San Francisco office referred comment to the ATF, which did not respond to a Press Democrat request for an interview.

Colt’s promises to ship massive amounts of fireworks to Sonoma County were troubling to council members, they said.

“Saying that it’s going to be a war zone in this town and things like that incites people to go after especially people of color,” Elward said.

“I disavow Jayson Colt’s pernicious behavior of threatening our elected officials,” Hollingsworth Adams said. “He’s left Sonoma County, but it seems he can’t leave Sonoma County alone.”

Police alerted to firearms photo

Rohnert Park police continue to investigate the July 4 trash can fire in front of Linares’ home.

Schwartz and Johnson stopped short of saying the incident is being investigated as a hate crime. But police also haven’t ruled that out, Schwartz said.

Police interviewed neighbors and reviewed video surveillance footage, Johnson said.

Local authorities also have been informed of a threat made earlier this year relating to the fireworks ban, according to Royes.

The message was from a man whom Royes declined to name, and it included a photo of his “arsenal” of firearms, she said.

She declined to offer more details about the message or when she received it. But Royes forwarded it to the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety, she said.

Johnson, the deputy police chief, did not respond to questions about that report.

The abuse didn’t all run one way, according to Simpson, the resident in favor of keeping fireworks.

She told The Press Democrat she had seen videos of “pro-ban people” harassing volunteers at nonprofit fireworks booths during the legal sale period for the July 4 holiday weekend.

Simpson said she wasn’t aware whether anyone had reported those incidents to police.

Dueling campaigns rolls on

The council majority formalized the fireworks ban on April 27 amid vocal opposition from civic groups and clubs determined to preserve their annual sales booths.

On May 25, they presented the City Clerk with a petition of nearly 4,000 signatures from Rohnert Park voters calling for the issue to be placed on the ballot. The ordinance was then suspended in favor of the measure being put before the voters, which then allowed sales of safe and sane fireworks to continue for the July 4 holiday.

Up to 13 vendors set up booths in parking lots across the city. Sales began on June 30 and ran through 9 p.m. July 4.

Rohnert Park received 201 calls about fireworks from 2 p.m. July 4 through 5 a.m. July 5, according to the city. Another 149 complaints about illegal fireworks came in through the Nail ‘Em app promoted by the city ahead of the holiday.

With the main event over, campaigns for and against Measure D, the referendum to decide whether the fireworks ban stays or goes, are gearing up for the Sept. 14 special election.

Royes is hopeful that – regardless of where Rohnert Park voters stand on Measure D – all Rohnert Park residents will agree that certain actions will not be tolerated.

“We need to make sure that the intimidation and violence against elected officials and residents is unacceptable behavior,” she said. “We cannot allow that to happen and to be OK.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mya Constantino at mya.constantino@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @searchingformya. Reach Staff Writer Kaylee Tornay at 707-521-5250 or kaylee.tornay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ka_tornay.