Gym owner charged criminally rallies Ramona against ‘COVID-19 police’

Peter San Nicolas speaks Tuesday night at a rally outside the Ramona Fitness Center, while his attorney, Gary Kreep, sits next to him listening. San Nicolas was charged last week with five misdemeanors for refusing to close his gym.(Josh DaFoe/San Diego Union Tribune) Peter San Nicolas says he’ll donate GoFundMe donations to the California Constitutional Rights Foundation, run by two former judges who have both been censured RAMONA — In the days after he became the first San Diego County business owner criminally charged for defying coronavirus-related health orders, Ramona gym owner Peter San Nicolas took to Facebook to decry the “Covid police” treating business owners “like common criminals.” On Tuesday night, San Nicolas held an informal town hall-style meeting outside the Ramona Fitness Center for himself and other business owners to voice their frustrations with state and local shutdown orders. The meeting came eight days after San Nicolas learned that San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan had charged him with five misdemeanors — each punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine up to $1,000 — for refusing to shut down his gym. At the rally, where about 90 percent of the few dozen attendees wore masks, the business owners shared experiences of closing, or being on the brink, due to the pandemic. Their message was that owners of gyms, salons, restaurants and other small businesses should be trusted to stay open and keep their customers and employees safe, just like grocery stores and big-box retailers. Catheren Murray, San Nicolas’ mother-in-law, told the crowd that she has permanently closed Busy Bee Preschool and Day Care Center, which her mother founded in 1981. “I’ve been there 39 years, and the sad thing is, this whole COVID took down our school,” Murray said as she fought back tears. Murray and her husband explained that state health orders had not mandated the closure, but that business had screeched to a halt amid the pandemic and related closures. Robert and Victoria Bradley said their business, Ramona Family Naturals Market, was thriving. But Robert Bradley said it was “important … for us as citizens to support people who are standing up, being the head of the spear right now. And we need to support Peter, and we need to support other people who are standing up and fighting for their rights. We should not surrender our rights.” A surprise speaker was Ammar Campa-Najjar, the Democrat running for the House of Representatives in the 50th District, of which Ramona is a part. “I hear you, the governor’s going to hear you, and when I’m in Congress, we’re going to fight against these types of things,” Campa-Najjar told the conservative crowd. At the behest of his attorney, San Nicolas clarified at the end of the event that Campa-Najjar’s presence and comments did not amount to an endorsement. ‘Covid police’ In a Facebook post announcing Tuesday night’s meeting outside his gym, San Nicolas recorded a cellphone video of himself, telling viewers: “I just got news from another business owner that the COVID police are making their rounds and they came and shut them down. They treated them like common criminals.” In the accompanying post, San Nicolas wrote the “COVID-19 police” are not sheriff’s deputies or police officers, but “a separate organization.” In a text message Wednesday, he said the “Covid police” he was referring to were “something along (the) line” of county health officials or code compliance officers. Tuesday’s meeting in Ramona — where one attendee suggested that all business owners re-open to give them strength in numbers, and two women who identified themselves as nurses downplayed the threat of the coronavirus — came amid mounting defiance by businesses and individuals across the county, and promises of stricter enforcement by local elected officials. Supervisor Nathan Fletcher on Tuesday said the “vast majority of businesses… are doing everything we ask of them,” but said there are a “handful of bad-faith actors whose selfish defiance of the public health order only serves to punish those entities that are following the rules and doing everything right.” Gyms, in particular, have become battlegrounds in recent weeks between county health officials and business owners, with several of them refusing to shut down again in July after they’d been briefly allowed to reopen in June. That included San Nicolas’ Ramona gym, other gyms in Vista and Oceanside, and Boulevard Fitness in San Diego’s University Heights neighborhood, the owners of which refused several orders to shut down as recently as Monday. Owners of The Gym in Pacific Beach refused to shut the business down until a COVID-19 outbreak was traced back to the facility. California Constitutional Rights Foundation The last speaker Tuesday night was Gary Kreep, a controversial ex-San Diego Superior Court judge who is serving as San Nicolas’ lawyer in his misdemeanor case. Kreep said he’d previously worked for San Nicolas on business matters, but is representing him for free in the criminal case on behalf of the California Constitutional Rights Foundation. San Nicolas has set up a GoFundMe to raise money for the group. Over the phone last week, Kreep described the Ramona-based legal group as a “conservative Christian nonprofit.” Its two most prominent members, Kreep and Steven Bailey, are both ex-judges who have been censured by California’s Commission on Judicial Performance. Kreep received a “severe public censure” in 2017 and was nearly removed from the bench for “(engaging) in a pattern of misconduct that demonstrates a lack of judicial temperament,” according to the commission. He was defeated in his bid for re-election in 2018. The commission also publicly censured Bailey in 2019 and issued a lifetime ban on his judicial service in California. Bailey, the Republican nominee for state attorney general in 2018, said Wednesday that he and Kreep were attacked for their conservative political beliefs “and our willingness to stand up … for them.” Kreep blamed his troubles as a judge and re-election defeat on “the Left.” According to Kreep, the California Constitutional Rights Foundation is a business name for a nonprofit called “Poll Watchers” registered in Wyoming. The group shares an address with Kreep’s law office on D Street in Ramona. Several of Kreep’s other prior legal advocacy groups and at least one political action committee, the Republican Majority Campaign, are or have been registered to the same address over the years. Kreep and Bailey said any money donated to San Nicolas’ fundraising campaign, or directly to the California Constitutional Rights Foundation, will not go toward politics, campaigns or lobbying, but directly to legal work on behalf of closed businesses or individuals targeted under coronavirus-related health orders. They said their group is representing a collection of restaurants in Nevada County, northeast of Sacramento. Bailey said they also represented 21 of 31 protesters who were arrested in May during an anti-lockdown rally in Sacramento. In a Facebook post, San Nicolas wrote that he was “joining the fight with the California Constitutional Rights Foundation in their quest to change these tyrannical orders that are decimating the small business population and the middle class.” San Nicolas is raising money for the group with a GoFundMe page that tells donors the “proceeds will be donated to a nonprofit that is fighting for all small businesses in California,” but does not specifically name the California Constitutional Rights Foundation as its benefactor, though he has reiterated that is where he will donate the money. As of Wednesday evening, 121 donors had pledged a little more than $11,200 to the cause, short of the $500,000 goal.