Politics: Is Don King Promoting These City Council Meetings?

Following her ouster by a recall effort, the mayor of South Gate, a town outside of Los Angeles, slugged another city official at a packed meeting. Read:

Less than 15 minutes into the meeting, with the overflow crowd already jeering Mayor Ruvalcaba, She tried to bar a resident from addressing the council, saying that she did not have a formal request to speak from him. The resident, Bill DeWitt, produced a date-stamped document indicating that he had filled out a speaker's card. The city attorney informed the mayor that he should be allowed to speak.

As the crowd yelled: "Let him talk! Let him talk!" Ruvalcaba banged her gavel, called a five- minute recess and headed into closed chambers with DeWitt's document in hand. At that point, Gonzalez attempted to intervene, reaching for the document and telling Ruvalcaba to give it back to DeWitt.

The crowd watched as the two officials struggled and then erupted in screams and shouts when Ruvalcaba threw a punch. The mayor then rushed into the back room as several uniformed South Gate police officers pursued her, jumping the wooden railing separating the council members and the crowd.

"Arrest the mayor! Arrest the mayor!" the crowd chanted. Noting the video cameras in use by some, a practice instituted by council critics in response to the city officials videotaping the crowd, someone called out: "Let's go to the replay."

"Unbelievable," said off-duty South Gate Police Officer Tony Mendez. "Did you see that? She just popped him."

"It's crazy," said Ken Louie, the city's director of finance. "Just when you thought you'd seen it all."