Mall arrest sparks free-speech debate

Dan Radel | Asbury Park (N.J.) Press

EATONTOWN, N.J. -- A former police officer's attempts to distribute leaflets and talk to mall patrons about religion has gotten him into hot water after he was charged with trespassing when he refused to leave the Monmouth Mall.

David Wells, 57, of the Oakhurst section of Ocean Township, is a born-again Christian who said he just wanted to talk to his fellow citizens about faith. So he went to the mall Nov. 5 and started handing out leaflets that resembled trillion-dollar bills that ask the question: "Will you go to heaven when you die?"

"That's how our conversation would begin. If they weren't interested in talking I didn't pursue it any more," Wells said.

But after Wells was observed by security officials distributing leaflets inside the mall to shoppers, he was asked to stop but refused. And according to the report from Detective Lt. Lawrence Tyler, Eatontown police were summoned by mall security.

"I was just talking to people. I wasn't amplified, I wasn't street preaching on top of a soapbox," said Wells, a former Long Branch police officer who retired from the force in 1997.

Tyler said mall management explained to Wells that they would make reasonable accommodations for him to distribute leaflets in accordance with the mall's policy for soliciting on their property, but that he needed to stop distributing the leaflets at that time.

Wells, according to the police report, disagreed with the mall management, then refused a request to stop distributing and refused to leave the property. At that time he was arrested and charged with defiant trespass.

Wells said a 1994 New Jersey Supreme Court ruling, New Jersey Coalition Against War in the Middle East v. J.M.B. Realty Corporation, gives him the right to hand out leaflets in the mall.

The case stemmed from Gulf War protesters who requested permission to hand out leaflet at malls and were denied access.

The court ruled that malls had become the new gathering point for citizens, displacing downtown business districts, and therefore must allow citizens to leaflet both inside and outside malls.

"Very specific to that case is that mall owners could impose reasonable time, place and manner restrictions," said Robert Williams, law professor at Rutgers University-Camden Campus.

Monmouth Mall, which is a property of Vornado Realty Trust, declined to comment on the incident. However, their code of conduct outlined on the mall's website allows picketing, leafleting, soliciting, and/or petitioning with prior written consent from mall management.

Wells said he did not have consent from the mall.

"People think they have free speech everywhere in this country. They are very surprised to find out it's not true if you're on private property. That's what makes these mall cases so interesting," Williams said.

Meanwhile, a petition to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, as well as officials of Vornado Realty, has been started on Wells' behalf, asking the company and the Monmouth Mall to allow free speech, and to "change their policies to comply with the protections of the United States Constitution and judicial case law banning discrimination."

The petition was started by Robert Angelini, a former police officer who retired from the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office in 2012 and is now a director at ReVision Theatre in Asbury Park.

"I know Dave. He's always out there trying to help people. He truly believes he's helping people," said Angelini, also of Ocean Township.

The petition had 378 signatures from across the country as of Tuesday evening.