More than four years after she was arrested and charged in connection with her protest at former President Donald Trump’s campaign rally, Sheila Buck is scheduled to stand trial in Tulsa County District Court.
Buck, now 67, is charged with misdemeanor obstructing an officer for allegedly refusing to move from a fenced area outside the BOK Center. A probable cause affidavit says members of Colorado Security Agency, a private security firm contracted by the Trump campaign to secure the June 2020 rally, ordered Tulsa police to remove Buck.
Judge Tanya Wilson dismissed the case in May 2023 after a witness failed to appear on the original trial date that month. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the case back to Tulsa County three months later, calling Wilson’s move “unduly extreme,” according to court records.
Buck's trial is scheduled the week of Sept. 9. The case has a pretrial hearing Friday.
Attorneys representing Buck claim TPD overstepped their authority because the city hadn't issued the Trump campaign a permit at the time of the arrest.
In the affidavit, TPD officer Matt Parker said he explained to Buck that he would remove her from the area for trespassing if she didn’t leave voluntarily.
“At that time, Buck refused and sat down in the street,” Parker wrote.
Parker then told Buck she was trespassing and gave her orders to leave, the affidavit states.
Bodycam footage shows Parker let Buck put her cell phone away so it wouldn’t get broken. Several reporters and photographers documented the arrest.
In one video, Buck says before she is removed that she has a ticket to the rally. Parker says organizers still want her gone.
“The event that is being held downtown today is considered to be a private event. They have a permit with the city, they have a perimeter and they have a fence. The only people inside the fence are those who are welcome by the event people,” Parker told Buck after he arrested her. “The event people decided they did not want you at the event, they uninvited you, even though you had a ticket."
In a 2022 deposition for a separate civil case filed by Buck, security officer Michael Edwards reportedly told Buck’s attorney Dan Smolen that Buck was barred because she was wearing a shirt that said “I Can’t Breathe.” The phrase is associated with the Black Lives Matter movement, and had recently been used to reference the police killing of George Floyd less than a month earlier.
“That was where she was going to make her stand, apparently,” Edwards told Smolen. “And from there I said, ‘Well, if that is your choice, then we are going to have to ask you to leave. You are going to be uninvited. You are uninvited from the event.’ And that is when Ms. Buck sat down. And then from there I grabbed local law enforcement to assist me with having her removed.”
Smolen also reportedly deposed TPD spokesperson Richard Meulenberg over previous questions on whether the city issued an event permit for the rally.
According to records, Meulenberg testified to Smolen that he didn’t “recall specifically” where he learned there was an event permit.
Officer Christopher Rhodes, who assisted Parker in the arrest, reportedly agreed with Smolen’s assertion that “at least publicly” there was no knowledge of an event permit.
In her civil case, Buck has sued the city, the U.S. Secret Service and the Trump campaign in federal court over claims that they violated her First, Fourth and 14th amendment rights in the arrest. Tulsa city councilors declined Buck’s requested settlement of at least $1 million in June 2023.
