In February, police in Claremore, Oklahoma arrested farmer Darren Blanchard for speaking a little too long during a community meeting about data centers. The city charged Blanchard with criminal trespass, a crime with a $200 penalty, but he’s vowed to fight the charge. He recently shared video of the bodycam footage for the first time with 404 Media and answered our questions about the moment cops arrested him for going over his time at a February 17 community meeting of the Claremore City Council.The plan in February was for the City Council to listen to the concerns citizens had about a planned data center called Project Mustang. The residents of Claremore don’t want the data center and largely feel like the construction project was approved without their input. City officials signed non-disclosure agreements on behalf of the project’s developers and haven’t been forthcoming with details about its construction.
Blanchard told 404 Media that his legal team filed a motion to dismiss the charge and requested the city’s attorney recuse himself as he was present at the city council meeting and witnessed the arrest. “I continue to maintain that my arrest was retaliatory, as I was engaging in protected speech at a public meeting. These actions as well as the undue resulting responses by the City of Claremore should raise major concern,” Blanchard said. “For now, I am allowing the legal process to move forward at whatever pace that may be. I am confident the truth will eventually come out, and remain steadfast in that this charge should never have been brought in the first place.”
Blanchard said he has no criminal history and that his arrest has been overwhelming. “Even if my charges are dismissed and the arrest is deemed unlawful, the process I have endured is the penalty,” he said. “I went to a public meeting to speak about an issue affecting my community of Northeast Oklahoma […] I ended up in handcuffs, jailed and later seeing that moment played and replayed nonstop on television and social media. That is not something you simply move past.”He said that he’s glad his arrest has brought attention to the fight against data centers. Communities deserve transparency, due process and protection from being industrialized without meaningful public input. But personally, it has been traumatic,” he said. “What concerns me most is the chilling effect. If someone can be arrested after speaking at a public meeting, others may decide it is safer to stay quiet. That should trouble everyone, regardless of where they may stand on data centers, artificial intelligence, energy infrastructure or matters of economic development.”Blanchard said he’s not shocked by the rise of anti-data center sentiment in America. “Across the country, people are beginning to recognize that these projects are not just abstract technology investments. They impact land, water, electricity rates, housing, agriculture and the overall character of our communities,” he said.“A pattern is unfolding where these developers come in with promises of jobs and investment, public officials are swayed to move quickly, oftentimes incognito via nondisclosure agreements and the long-term costs are pushed onto residents who had little say in the process,” he said. “Whether it is rising utility bills, unsustainable demands on our water, transmission lines and the concern for eminent domain, nonsensical tax incentives or the loss of farmland and rural ways of life, people are asking a very basic question: who is this ultimately serving?”
Blanchard raised some of these issues during the February community meeting. In an attempt to accommodate the overwhelming number of people who wanted to speak, the City of Claremore established a hard and fast three minute time limit for people talking during public comments.In the bodycam footage, Blanchard went a few seconds over that three minutes and two police officers swooped in.“You need to leave,” one officer said.“I’m done with the mic,” Blanchard said. He held up documents he brought with him. “Can I present my records?”“Sir, you’ve been asked to leave,” the cop said. Blanchard walks to the front of the room, begins to give his documents to the city council and the officers follow.“You can give them to Sarah and then let’s go,” one of the officers said. “You’ve been asked to leave.” “This is a public meeting,” Blanchard said as he sorted through the documents.“OK. You can give them to Sarah but you’ve been asked to leave,” the officer said.“On what grounds?” Blanchard said.“Right now,” the officer said.“I said on what grounds?” Blanchard said.“Arrest him,” an officer, identified from the police report as Sergeant Sanger, said. Then the two officers had Blanchard’s hands behind his back and in cuffs. The crowd booed and shouted.“That’s a cowardly thing to do,” a woman shouted over the noise of the crowd as the officers escorted Blanchard out.A man yelled, “So you can break the law but we can’t?”Another woman rushed to one of the police officers, her phone out and filming. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “It’s ridiculous, people.”The arrest hasn’t stopped Blanchard from speaking out. He’s appeared on local news outlets several times and is speaking out against the data center in public every chance he gets. “When utility bills rise, when land is taken or devalued, when public resources are committed and when tax breaks are handed out without real accountability, that functions as a de facto tax on the local citizenry. So the question becomes one of representation,” Blanchard told 404 Media. “Were the people truly heard, or were these decisions effectively made before the public ever entered the room? He’s also confident he’ll prevail in the courts. “I still believe justice will be done, but again, the process itself has already become part of the punishment. That cannot be undone,” he said.The Claremore Police Department did not respond to 404 Media’s request for a comment.