Kaiser Supporter Ticketed For Honking

When it came to supporting Kaiser pickets, Jennie Knisley thought she couldn’t honk enough.

A sheriff’s deputy thought otherwise.

Just before noon Saturday, when she performed her ritual beep-beep on Hawthorne Road from one Kaiser Mead gate to the other, a sheriff’s deputy pulled her over and issued a $71 ticket for “excessive honking.”

“I was not speeding. I was not swerving. I was not doing anything at all,” she said. Just honking.

“I flat told him it was out and out harassment,” she said.

The Sheriff’s Department, which has patrol cars stationed outside both Kaiser plants, has written a number of traffic tickets at the sites.

“I can’t comment on a specific ticket,” said David Reagan, sheriff’s spokesman. “I know that our deputies that are working the Kaiser strike zone are under no specific restrictions for what they can write or what they can’t write. It’s basically officer discretion.”

He said an excessive honking ticket is not unusual.

Knisley is a Teamster union member who supports Kaiser’s Steelworkers. She’s stood with them on the picket line.

She plans to contest the ticket. “I flat don’t think I committed any infraction.”

Knisley also plans to continue honking when she drives by the Mead plant.

“He’s not going to stop me from going up there and showing my support,” she said. “You can’t lay on that horn long enough or hard enough to show these Kaiser workers the support that they need.”