The police officer who arrested a Hispanic woman accused of removing her neighbor’s Confederate battle flag, which she asserted was flapping into her mother’s front yard, deduced she had trespassed, according to documents obtained through the Texas Public Information Act.
Rosie Yanas-Stone, who is charged with criminal trespass, a class B misdemeanor, and resisting arrest, search, or transportation, a class A misdemeanor, resisted the officer’s attempts to arrest her multiple times before she was booked into jail about 10:30 a.m. Jan. 28, police department documents allege.
Yanas-Stone maintains her arrest was an injustice and said in a social media post she would file an official complaint against officer Frank DeLeon.
The charges stem from a long-running dispute between Stone and her neighbor, Randy Steven Turrentine, over a Confederate battle flag Turrentine has flown from the fence dividing his property and Stone’s mother’s property. The dispute has been going on since 2012, Yanas-Stone said.
The League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group, and Yanas-Stone’s attorney called Feb. 3 for authorities to drop the charges and open an investigation into the arrest.
The call to 5511 E. Bellaire St. on the day of Yanas-Stone’s arrest wasn’t the first time police officer had been dispatched to deal with the flag dispute, documents obtained by The Daily News show. The documents assert Yanas-Stone already has received a criminal trespass warning before she was arrested in late January.
“At that time I recalled multiple past calls for service to this residence for an ongoing dispute between the neighbors concerning Randy Turrentine flying a Confederate flag on his own property and his neighbor, Rosie Yanas trespassing on his property to bring down the flag,” DeLeon said in an arrest affidavit.
DeLeon said that upon arriving at the property on Jan. 28 he talked to Turrentine, who told him Yanas-Stone had removed his flag from its post on his property, according to the affidavit.
“As the flag which Rosie Yanas admitted to removing was entirely within the 5511 E. Bellaire St. property, Rosie Yanas would have had to reach into Turrentine’s property to remove the flag which in turn, violated the criminal trespass warning Rosie Yanas actively possessed for the property,” DeLeon said.
But Yanas-Stone has disputed that, and said that she has stayed on her own property to remove the flag.
“I then advised Rosie Yanas that she was under arrest, to which she told me no, and backed away from me as I approached her,” DeLeon said.
“After multiple orders to bring her other hand behind her back, Rosie Yanas failed to comply and I was eventually able to reach around her and bring her hands behind her back to which she continued to pull away from me,” he said.
Yanas-Stone said the arrest that day was uncalled for.
“The straw that broke the camel’s back was that the police officers always came out here for minor stuff but this time that officer showed up by himself and that was just my last straw,” Yanas-Stone said. “What happened that day will come to light and I hope that everyone sees the injustice.”
Stone was transported to the Santa Fe Police Department after being arrested and was booked without incident.
Shortly after, Jerrel Davis, who was noted as assisting Turrentine during the incident, provided a witness statement of his observations from the incident.
“Jerrel did not advise in his statement that he observed Rosie touching the flag but after she yelled at them, he saw the flag on the ground,” DeLeon said in the arrest affidavit.
