Putting Picketing Law to Test : Protest: Anti-abortion activists try to skirt new ordinance, which forbids demonstrations in front of homes, by marching in clinic director’s neighborhood. But Tustin police arrest three.

TUSTIN — About 40 anti-abortion activists on Saturday tested the limits of a new ordinance that prohibits picketing of private homes by defying police and demonstrating in the neighborhood where an abortion clinic director lives.

Three of the demonstrators were arrested.

“It is indeed a sad day in America when people are put in handcuffs and brought to jail for exercising their rights to free speech,” said Dave Conrardy of Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group.

Allen Meadows, 23, of Tustin, Robert Ferguson, 37, of Montebello and Duane Leach, 34, of San Juan Capistrano were taken to the Tustin police station but were later released after being cited, police said.

Police Lt. Frank Semelsberger said Tustin City Atty. James G. Rourke will evaluate the case for possible prosecution. The ordinance carries a penalty of up to six months in jail, a $1,000 fine, or both, he said.

Meadows, Ferguson and Leach were among activists from the Tustin Pro-Life Coalition and other California anti-abortion groups that marched around a neighborhood where the director lives.

The demonstration was a test of the new city ordinance, which the council passed on April 5, on the request of Tustin resident Naomi Hardin, a director of the Doctors Family Planning clinic in Tustin, who complained that her home has been repeatedly picketed by anti-abortion activists.

Hardin said that she was fearful of her life after the shooting death recently of a Florida doctor, allegedly by someone opposed to abortion.

As police watched from their squad cars, the demonstrators, carrying placards, gathered at 11 a.m. at a shopping center several hundred feet from Hardin’s house.

They marched around the neighborhood, never stopping at a particular house as they had planned, according to Meadows, to skirt around the ordinance’s prohibition of picketing in front of a residence.

But when they entered a cul-de-sac where Hardin lives, the police stopped them and asked them to disperse.

Police Sgt. Jim Peery read the ordinance to the marchers. After some discussion between police and the demonstrators, most of the marchers pulled back. Meadows, Ferguson and Leach stayed behind to talk with police.

“The debate is over,” Tustin Police Chief W. Douglas Franks told the marchers. “It is the opinion of the Police Department that you are in violation of the ordinance.”

Then the police officers put Meadows, Ferguson and Leach in handcuffs. There were no other arrests.

But demonstrators charged the arrests were illegal.

“We’re losing our freedoms little by little and no one is paying attention,” said Ann Egan, 63, who came from Buena Park to join the march.

“This (country) is like a police state now,” said another Buena Park resident, Dea Herick, 55. “You can’t even speak. The police tell you to shut up.”

Franks said the arrests were necessary to enforce the ordinance.

“They failed to obey the police order to stop the picket,” he said. “A court of law may not agree with me, but it was my opinion that they had violated the ordinance.”

Some of Hardin’s neighbors agreed with the police action.

William Cogswell, 64, who lives with his wife, Ann, and daughter, Melinda Willingham, across from the Hardin house, said he is tired of the demonstrations.

“If they want to picket a business, it’s OK, but not in front of our homes,” he said. “They disrupt our lives.”

Al Theurich, who also lives across the street, engaged in a shouting match with one of the demonstrators Saturday. He said it was wrong for the anti-abortion activists to impose their views on other people.

“If they are against abortion, they should go and adopt abandoned babies,” he said.