The Churchill County School District Board of Trustees has served a notice of trespass to Geoff Knell, a self-proclaimed “Street Preacher” and now candidate for City Council, Ward 3.
In the State of Nevada, under Nevada Revised Statute 207, a property owner may issue a trespass warning, giving notice that the person is no longer allowed on that property. If the person then ignores the notice and goes on the property, they have trespassed, and law enforcement will escort them off the property. The person can then be found to be guilty of a misdemeanor.
Sharla Hales, attorney for the school district, confirmed that the notice was delivered to Knell. “When a public entity cannot do their work because of interruptions, that is how public bodies justify a trespass. Public bodies are entitled to do their work without interruption,” she said.
During a recent ceremony attended by the State Superintendent of Education, the Captain of NAS Fallon, and other dignitaries, Knell attended, speaking over the presenters and disrupting the event by yelling statements about LGBTQ and accusing the district of hurting kids. The following day he stood outside the E.C. Best campus during an event held for the second and third graders where he used his loudspeaker to disrupt that event as well.
Under NRS 393 it is unlawful for a person to be a nuisance in a public schoolhouse or to loiter on or near school grounds.
Knell is regularly seen near local school grounds talking to students over his loudspeaker and has over the past several years called students, “whores” and other offensive comments directly to them. He regularly interferes with students as they walk to and from school, yelling at them, and calling them to repentance.
The first week of the school year, Knell raised the ire of several local parents when they witnessed him yelling obscenities and calling female students offensive names as he stood in the parking lot of a daycare near the high school campus. One mother was dropping off her three-year-old as he yelled obscenities. Parents reported his actions to the local Police Department.
During a formal interview, Knell discussed his reasoning behind that episode with The Fallon Post. “People listen more to cuss words and angry bitterness than good tidings. That’s what a lesbian is,” in reference to the word he called the female students.
When told that the pre-school child heard the yelling, Knell responded, “They don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Knell regularly attends local government meetings including county commission, board of health, and school board meetings where children are present and lectures during public comment, often quoting scripture to make his point. He begins his remarks at each meeting, by saying, ‘I’m a thorn in the government’s side. I’m loud, and you don’t like me.”
He also told us, “Sharing the word of God is a biblical mandate. You aren’t paying attention to what I say, I preach scripture, and I ask them (elected officials) to make better judgment fiscally. I ask them not to give money to an organization that doesn’t honor God. I do get aggressive, but I speak with authority.”
At a County Commission meeting held in August of 2021, Knell urged commissioners to stand against the state and federal government, threatening them if they did not take action. “The Declaration says we can remove you in any fashion we can,” he said during his remarks.
In July of 2021, at a City Council meeting where he was particularly disruptive and had taken the limited three minutes during each public comment period, during the final public comment period Knell said, “I’m not being heard. People on the street yell at me, calling me Satan, and someone behind my car on the street flipped me off. Mr. City Attorney, you need to read the Open Meeting Law of 2020,” and then quoted from a Supreme Court case, New York Times v. Sullivan, 1964, saying that the Supreme Court opined that we are a nation founded on a “national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
“I don’t have to be nice to you,” said Knell.
City Attorney Mike Mackedon then addressed Knell’s comments saying the Sullivan case would not apply to the city council meeting. “The mayor is in charge of the meeting as a matter of law and has the right to limit the discussion to matters that benefit the public.”
The trespass warning expires in one year, on April 28, 2023.
Knell responded to an email request for comment on his intent to comply with the trespass notice by saying, “Will not give you the satisfaction communist rag propaganda. Just don't get it. The children in this school district are being influenced it is called depopulation.”
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