Racist threats toward Sacramento college president prompt permanent restraining order
A permanent restraining order was granted in Sacramento Superior Court last week against a woman accused of making racist threats to the president of American River College, barring her from setting foot on Los Rios Community College District property.
The four-campus community college district on March 3 filed for a workplace violence restraining order against Jamie Yvonne Barnes. A temporary restraining order was granted the same day, listing Melanie Dixon as the protected person.
The district’s request for a permanent restraining order was granted in a hearing last Friday, court records show. The order legally prohibits Barnes from setting foot on any Los Rios campus or facility, and from making contact with any Los Rios employee.
Barnes, 44, was arrested twice in a span of six days last month by the Los Rios Police Department.
Police arrested Barnes at Sacramento City College on March 15 after she called dispatchers and made a series of accusations against Los Rios determined to be “unsubstantiated,” the district said in an email to students.
Dixon, president of American River College in Carmichael, and Los Rios Chancellor Brian King during a March 17 news conference said Barnes has not been a student at the college for several years, but that she has a history of making harassing and disruptive phone calls to Dixon and the campus, which Dixon said only recently began to include threats.
The district in an email to students after the first arrest said the messages included “vile and racist” language directed at Dixon, who is Black. Dixon declined to share specifics on the language used by Barnes.
Los Rios police arrested Barnes again on March 21, at an off-campus location in Fair Oaks a few miles from American River College, on a misdemeanor warrant. She has since been released from custody.
The district in a statement late last month said community college police arrested Barnes the second time for “additional violations” of her temporary restraining order, though there had been “no evidence that Barnes has returned” to any Los Rios facilities.
Barnes, a former teacher, has an extensive history of filing civil lawsuits in Sacramento County, and is also the subject of at least three other permanent restraining orders: two involving small business owners and one involving a church, all located in East Sacramento.
In 2011, she filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against San Juan Unified School District; a judge ruled in favor of the district in 2012. Barnes then filed more than a dozen defamation lawsuits between 2011 and 2012 against plaintiffs including then-Mayor Kevin Johnson, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, American River College, Sacramento State and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. All were either dismissed or settled out of court.
This story was originally published April 26, 2022 at 3:09 PM.
