Man arrested during the Sacramento City Council meeting. Here’s what happened
A man who routinely makes antisemitic, racist and sexist remarks during Sacramento City Council meetings was arrested Tuesday.
Ryan Messano, who’s been speaking at the meetings for more than a year, attended the meeting Tuesday and turned in a speaker slip to the city clerk. After the council heard public comments on an item about fee increases, the clerk said there were no more public comments. Messano then stood in his chair and yelled that he had submitted a slip.
“Nope,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said. “Please sit down or we will ask you to leave... you cannot come up to the lectern if you continue disrupting the meeting we’re going to ask you to leave.”
“Your filing a restraining order to stop my free speech is not gonna stop me,” Messano said from his chair, a police officer standing next to him. He approached the podium and repeated saying, “it’s my turn to speak.”
Three officers approached, placed handcuffs on him and escorted him outside. They transported him to jail and charged him with “willful disobedience of a court order,” a misdemeanor, with bail set at $5,000.
A Sacramento police spokesperson said a city employee has an active temporary restraining order against Messano, and when he approached the podium, he violated it. The police did not name the employee. In addition to the council and mayor, several top staffers sat on the dais at the time, including Assistant City Manager Leyne Milstein, City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood and City Clerk Mindy Cuppy.
Messano was booked at the jail at about 6:30 p.m, about four hours after officers removed him from City Hall, according to Sheriff’s Office inmate records. He was released Wednesday morning after spending the night in jail.
Spokespeople for the Sheriff’s Office and Sacramento Superior Court did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the details of Messano’s release.
In addition to Sacramento City Council, Messano has made comments at Vallejo City Council, where he was removed from a meeting in 2018.
In May 2023, Messano told the Sacramento council: “Any white person in America is open game, but you’re not allowed to criticize non-whites and you’re not allowed to criticize other groups.”
Later that month he said: “Antisemitism used to mean someone who hates all Jews, now it means someone who is hated by Jew bankers,” Messano told the council May 15.
The comments prompted a large group of Sacramento Jewish leaders to denounce the comments in a news conference. It’s also prompted groups of people attending the meeting with large banners shouting over Messano when he speaks, leading to Steinberg to adjourn several meetings early or go into hourslong recesses.
Messano could not be immediately reached for comment for this story. He posted to his website in May 2023: “Let me be very clear, I am not associated with Proud Boys, I am not a Nazi, I do not support any authoritarian government, and I support the rights of all people, races, and all religions. I have been viciously lied about, slandered, and libeled by the Jewish media.”
It’s not the first time the city has filed a restraining order against a person who was disrupting council meetings. City Manager Howard Chan and three council members in 2019 got a temporary restraining order against Alexander Clark, who in 2018 said from the podium: “I feel like if it was up to me, all y’all motherf------ would be dead.”
