Kamloops councillor says he was confronted by mayor at car show, heckled by crowd

CONTENT ADVISORY

The annual Hot Nite in the City car show got a little more heated for two Kamloops politicians this past weekend.

Conflict between the mayor and a city councillor spilled out of city hall and onto Victoria Street as one of the city’s largest downtown events became their stage.

Coun. Bill Sarai was preparing to deliver a speech at the afternoon awards ceremony on Aug. 9 as this month’s deputy mayor, when he was forced to deal with Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson.

“He just lost it,” Sarai said of the mayor.

With no notice to organizers or Sarai, Hamer-Jackson wanted to take the stage and hand out the awards. Sarai reminded the mayor council has barred him from representing the city, which Sarai said was met with aggression.

“‘You guys are lying pieces of shit. You’re a motherfucker, piece of shit,'” Sarai quoted the mayor as saying.

Hamer-Jackson has declined interview requests.

A nearby witness heard the argument, corroborated Sarai’s account and attributed Hamer-Jackson as the aggressor.

“We were just shocked at the vulgarity of the language being used,” she said.

The witness asked that her name not be used for fear of reprisal against her organization.

“We had family members, we had visitors from out of country at this event. It was too strong, too heated — there’s no room for that at a community event,” she said. “It was really shocking.”

For event organizer Joe Doyle, the dust-up was an unfortunate spat during an otherwise successful event.

“Obviously it’s not private what’s going on in the political atmosphere,” he said. “They had a little disagreement, some words were said and it was over.”

He didn’t say what Hamer-Jackson or what Sarai said or what they were arguing about.

“All I said is, ‘Guys, can you please leave this for another time and have a conversation later? This is about (the event’s founder Ron Popoff) and the car show,'” Doyle said.

But, it didn’t end there.

Sarai was heckled from the crowd as he went on to deliver his speech.

“They were telling councillor Sarai to get off the stage and ‘we want the mayor’ as he was reading out the award categories and the winners,” fire chief Ken Uzeloc said.

Uzeloc said he didn’t know the hecklers by name, but he did recognize at least some who have frequented council meetings, which has seen the mayor’s vocal supporters speak out during council debates.

He arrived at Sarai’s request and so did Kamloops RCMP Supt. Jeff Pelley amid the heckling. Event organizers and others in the crowd called on them to quiet down and the heckling eventually stopped, according to Uzeloc.

Not unlike Hamer-Jackson’s news conference last year in which a local journalist was shouted down by the mayor’s supporters, Sarai said he was fearful until Pelley and Uzeloc informed him the hecklers had left.

“I had no other councillors with me, I’m by myself,” Sarai said. “I didn’t know how it was going to end, that was the scary part. Are they going to be waiting for me?”

Sarai said council is considering its next move after the public confrontation, but he said both a council code of conduct complaint and an RCMP investigation are possible.

Hamer-Jackson did not respond to phone calls from iNFOnews.ca on Monday morning and Kamloops RCMP has not responded to comment on the incident.

Hamer-Jackson has taken issue with his removal as the city’s official spokesperson in the past, which was enforced as one of the punishments for his conduct on council and toward city staff. Since then, the rotating deputy mayor speaks at local events on behalf of the city instead of Hamer-Jackson.