An Oregon coast man who repeatedly held a one-person protest against President Donald Trump in his tiny rural community has filed a $75,000 lawsuit against local police and the county politician who he says called for his arrest.
In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, Neil Daniels claims Coos County Commissioner Rod Taylor infringed on his right to free speech as Daniels yelled, “Trump’s a loser!” from a public sidewalk outside county headquarters in Coquille, prompting Taylor to become “enraged” and phone police.
Daniels told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Taylor was particularly upset over that day’s protest — opposed to the 10 or so other times he’d demonstrated — because Taylor was hosting a special guest that day, who had traveled the nation falsely claiming he could prove the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.
Daniels, a 59-year-old retired police and probation officer, said it was the first time he had ever been arrested. He said he was handcuffed and hauled off to jail under accusations of disorderly conduct. The Coos County district attorney didn’t pursue any criminal charges against him over the Oct. 10, 2024, encounter.
His lawsuit lists as defendants Taylor, the county commissioner; Coos County, under the claim that Taylor was acting in his official capacity; the city of Coquille; and Coquille police officer Jessica Pierce, who made the arrest, according to the suit.
Coos County Counsel Colton Totland declined to comment. The city and Pierce didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
Taylor disputed the lawsuit’s claims.
“One thing I will say: the allegations that my engagement with Mr. Daniels on 10/10/24 included rage or inordinate proximity to Mr. Daniels, or that I issued any request for him to be arrested, is categorically false,” Taylor wrote in an email response to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
A clash in political philosophies
Tensions had been brewing between Daniels and Taylor — two men with very different political views — for at least the previous two years.
Daniels said he started his occasional Trump protests in 2022 because he was appalled that Taylor was running for county commission after he had admitted traveling to Washington, D.C., to be there on Jan. 6, 2021, the day rioters violently stormed the Capitol.
Taylor wouldn’t answer questions posed by The Oregonian/OregonLive about whether he thought Trump won the 2020 election or the lawsuit’s allegation that he “publicly admitted to participating in the January 6, 2021, mob that breached the U.S. Capitol to delay the 2020 electoral count.” But an NPR story quoted him as telling a local conservative talk radio host: “You know what, I’m proud to have been there on Jan. 6. … It was a peaceable gathering on the 6th ... people were happy, man."
Daniels said he continued the protests after Taylor’s election — Taylor won by less than 1 percentage point — because he “views the events of January 6 as treasonous.”
Daniels told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he sometimes wears a mask with the words “TRUMP LOST GET OVER IT.” He also has carried homemade signs and chanted slogans like “Rod Taylor’s a traitor.” But his lawsuit states he “always protests peacefully.”
Daniels said he has often received an icy response from people who pass by in the 4,000-resident town of Coquille. In the 2020 and 2024 elections, nearly 60% of voters in Coos County cast their ballots for Trump.
“The reception is not kind,” Daniels said. “... Usually, it was comments like, ‘How much are you getting paid!?’ And, obviously, I wasn’t getting paid anything.”
Daniels said he worked for nearly 30 years in law enforcement, including for Bandon and Roseburg police. He retired from his work as a parole and probation officer for the Oregon Department of Corrections in 2017, according to his suit.
Taylor operates a local company that sells surveying equipment. His term ends on Dec. 31, 2026, and he’s not running for a second term.
The arrest
Daniels said tensions reached a boiling point the morning of Oct. 10, 2024, when Taylor was about to host his special guest and approached him outside county offices.
“He pulled up in his dump truck that he drives to work sometimes with ‘Trump won’ stickers all over it,” Daniels said. “I think it has one or two on every side of the thing.”
Daniels said Taylor had a gun holstered to his hip, walked up to him and started berating him. Daniels said he heard Taylor on the phone with dispatch, falsely reporting that Daniels was “yelling and harassing people.”
The suit says Daniels was “shaken” and wanted to de-escalate the encounter, so he “retreated” to the other end of the block. The suit says Pierce, the Coquille police officer, arrived to handcuff him and pin him against her police cruiser, “all while shouting, ‘Stop resisting!’”
Daniels told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Pierce then drove about a block, parked in front of the county building and went inside, leaving him in the back seat while several Trump supporters who’d gathered outside walked up to him and one tried to take his photo.
Athul Acharya, an attorney and executive director of the Portland-based nonprofit Public Accountability, is representing Daniels in his lawsuit pro bono.
Acharya said his client was simply exercising his rights when he was arrested.
“There’s not a gray area there at all under the Oregon Constitution and the federal Constitution,” Acharya said. “What he was doing was protected speech.”
Daniels said that although the criminal case against him went nowhere, his arrest has had a chilling effect on him. He said he’s only protested once since.
“It kind of dampened going down there for me a little bit,” Daniels said. “I started to get a lot of anxiety.”
The suit was filed Oct. 8 in Coos County Circuit Court.
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