Advocate Arrested at City and County Meetings

Sheriff Bill Brown helped two of his deputies put the cuffs on homeless advocate Bob “Protest” Hansen (pictured right) after Hansen refused to leave the public podium at the county supervisors 12/8 meeting. Hansen was bemoaning the lack of shelter space for homeless people ​— ​citing a feces-befouled one-legged homeless man in a wheelchair on State Street ​— ​and called on the Red Cross to open an emergency facility in winter months. When board chair Janet Wolf notified Hansen his allotted three minutes were up, he announced, “I’m not leaving.” When a deputy approached him, Hansen made it clear nothing short of arrest could make him go. Hansen was similarly escorted out of a Santa Barbara City Council hearing later in the day when he voiced the same complaints and then refused to yield the floor.