LANCASTER -- The captain who serves as the top sheriff's official in Lancaster has defended his deputies' handling of last month's controversial protest at a pagan religious ceremony.

A deputy took 4 1/2 hours to arrive at the Witches Grove book shop because it was a busy evening and sheriff's personnel mistook the call for a routine complaint about loud music at a business, not because two of the protesters were volunteer chaplains for the Sheriff's Department, Capt. Tom Pigott told the Antelope Valley Human Relations Task Force on Monday.

"There is no way in the world we would ever skew an investigation or fail to conduct an investigation simply because of a connection a person might have to our department," said Pigott, adding that even sheriff's deputies have been arrested in other cases. "It wouldn't happen. Sheriff (Lee) Baca wouldn't stand for it. I will not stand for it."

More than 100 people crowded into a room at City Hall to discuss the incident March 16 outside in the parking lot behind Witches Grove, a Lancaster Boulevard business.

Participants at City Hall included Lancaster's vice mayor, civil-rights representatives of the U.S. Attorney's Office, a former assistant U.S. attorney now responsible for reviewing the Sheriff's Department, local pastors and people wearing pentacle pendants.

The controversy is over exactly what happened while Witches Grove owner Cyndia Riker and dozens of other followers of the Wiccan religion were holding a spring equinox ceremony in the shop's rear parking lot.

They said they were interrupted by loud Christian rock music, blaring from a vehicle parked nearby, and by several men who walked around the circle of Wiccan worshippers loudly reciting Bible verses.

Riker told the task force that one man leaned against her 14-year-old son. "He was told his mother was leading him to the devil," she said.

Local prosecutors declined to file charges, saying that the incident was an encounter by two different groups exercising their First Amendment rights in a public place.

Both state and federal laws that bar disruptions of religious ceremonies are narrowly written, officials said.

Federal law makes it a crime to use "force or the threat of force" to interfere with a person's exercise of religion, Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Wittcoff told the task force. She said she concluded those factors were absent from the Witches Grove incident.

State law prohibits disturbing people at a "tax-exempt place of worship," said sheriff's Sgt. Katherine Voyer, head of the sheriff's hate-crime bureau. Task force members said that means the law does not cover the Witches Grove parking lot and many meeting places of other small local churches.

Billy Pricer, a former high school trustee and founder of a youth counseling center, and his son-in-law John Canavello were the two volunteer sheriff's chaplains in the March 16 incident.

Canavello, identified as the driver of the vehicle blaring the music, was suspended as a sheriff's volunteer over the incident.

"We were not there to hurt people," Pricer said after attending the task force meeting, adding that he watched the Wiccan ceremony from his vehicle. "We were certainly there to observe. We came to exercise our First Amendment rights to peacefully pray."

Pricer added: "There was a lot of misinformation from their side. I won't get into that."

Wiccan worshipper Thomas Breul told the task force he had approached the vehicle with blaring music and told the driver to turn it down or expect him to call the Sheriff's Department. In response, the man showed him a Sheriff's Department name tag, Breul said. He claimed he was told that deputies would not come if he called.

"I did call. I had faith in my Sheriff's Department," Breul said. "They didn't come."

Pigott told the task force he has not decided whether to reinstate Canavello, who said his plastic name badge was lying on the vehicle's center console and that Breul saw it through the vehicle window.

Pigott said that deputies were not aware of the protest before Breul called to complain, that they did not then know Pricer and Canavello were there and that neither Pricer nor Canavello was in any position to influence the department's response.

"Nobody has that kind of authority, that kind of juice," Pigott said. The slow response "was based on the number of calls, the priority of calls coming in -- nothing else."

The Wiccans got support from task force panelists who belong to other faiths.

"The Wicca group is hurt. The community needs to help them heal," said task force members Kamal M. Al-Khatib, chief financial officer of the American Islamic Institute of Antelope Valley.

Added task force member Mike Kirkland: "As a Christian man and as pastor of a Christian church that believes in Jesus Christ, I'm appalled we've come to a point where we have to do something other than what Jesus Christ did, and that is lead by example."

But Pricer also got support. Task force member Henry Hearns, Lancaster vice mayor and a Southern Baptist pastor himself, said: "He's a wonderful guy. If he says something, I believe it."

CHRONOLOGY

March 16

3:45 p.m. -- Caller reports loud music is disrupting a religious observance on Lancaster Boulevard.

5:06 p.m. -- Because of the address, the call is assigned to patrol deputy to investigate as a routine complaint of loud music at a business. The deputy gets four other calls within 18 minutes.

8:05 p.m. -- Deputy tells station desk he can't get to loud-music call. It is assigned to another deputy.

8:18 p.m. -- Second deputy arrives at Witches Grove, finds it closed. During that shift, Lancaster deputies answered 76 calls, including 29 emergency calls, and made 29 arrests.

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