Police arrest two protesters at Polk's only clinic that offers abortions

Gary White, The Ledger
·4 min read
Greg Delauney, center, talks to a Lakeland Police Officer Kareem Garibaldi after his wife, Angela Delauney, was arrested while protesting outside the Lakeland Women's Health Center on Friday afternoon. An unidentified anti-abortion advocate listens to the conversation.
Greg Delauney, center, talks to a Lakeland Police Officer Kareem Garibaldi after his wife, Angela Delauney, was arrested while protesting outside the Lakeland Women's Health Center on Friday afternoon. An unidentified anti-abortion advocate listens to the conversation.

LAKELAND — A few hours after the Supreme Court announced its monumental ruling overturning Roe v. Wade on Friday, a small group of anti-abortion activists stood in front of the only Polk County clinic that offers the procedure.

Soon after that, two of them were in the back of Lakeland Police Department vehicles.

Police arrested Quentin Eugene Deckard of Seffner and Angela Delauney of Mulberry outside the Lakeland Women’s Health Center at 4444 S. Florida Ave. Delauney often protests outside the Lakeland clinic with her husband, Greg Delauney.

The couple’s three young children cried as an LPD vehicle drove away with their mother in the back seat.

The agency sent officers to the clinic Friday afternoon in anticipation of a potential large protest following the Supreme Court ruling overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling from 1973.

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According to a police report, Deckard, 52, stood on a ladder placed on a sidewalk at the front of the clinic property, using a megaphone to amplify his voice as he called toward patients and volunteer escorts. Deckard spoke loudly enough to disturb the peace inside the clinic, Officer Hiram Cuevas wrote in the report.

Protesters are not allowed on clinic property but are able to stand on a sidewalk along South Florida Avenue. The clinic’s owners have erected an opaque fence near the sidewalk, making it more difficult for protesters to see the entrance.

Some anti-abortion demonstrators have begun bringing ladders that allow them to see over the fence, the clinic's volunteer escorts said. In response, the clinic installed black plastic sheeting at the top of the fence.

Deckard was holding onto the fence with one hand and holding the megaphone in the other as he spoke, the LPD report said.

As a Black woman walked toward the clinic entrance, Deckard called out, "Black lives don't matter" and "Black people are like cockroaches that should be exterminated," the report said. Cuevas wrote that he approached Deckard, who said he was quoting Margaret Sanger, founder of a group that became Planned Parenthood.

Abortion opponents often claim that Sanger advocated using the procedure to reduce the Black population, though Politifact has rated those claims as false.

LPD officers arrested Deckard on charges of breach of the peace and violating the city's noise ordinance, the report said.

He was taken to the police station and released Friday afternoon with a court date of Aug. 5.

In the arrest report for Delauney, Officer Kevin Schuttler wrote that he arrived to provide backup at the clinic. Schuttler wrote that officers had given verbal warnings to the protesters that signs could not be affixed to power poles and that doing so blocked the view of drivers turning onto South Florida Avenue from Horizon Court.

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Officers later checked and found that two signs were still attached to a power pole, the report said. Officers had warned that they would confiscate any signs still in place, and as an officer reached to take a sign, Delauney tried to prevent its removal by grabbing the sign and pulling it toward her, the report said.

An officer gave Delauney a loud verbal command to release the sign but she didn't do so, the report said. An officer told the woman she was under arrest and began to handcuff her, but Delauney pulled away and resisted, the report says.

LPD charged Delauney with resisting arrest without violence.

Greg Delauny packs up his extension ladder after Lakeland police arrested his wife, Angela, while protesting outside the Lakeland Women's Health Center on South Florida Avenue.
Greg Delauny packs up his extension ladder after Lakeland police arrested his wife, Angela, while protesting outside the Lakeland Women's Health Center on South Florida Avenue.

Greg Delauney could be seen speaking intently with an LPD officer after his wife was driven away.

The Lakeland clinic has attracted anti-abortion protesters for decades. The demonstrators have grown in number and become a more regular presence in recent years for various reasons.

While some demonstrates stand silently and pray, a more vocal contingent calls out to patients entering or leaving the clinic. Those protesters regularly carry large posters with gruesome images they say are aborted fetuses photographed at abortion clinics.

A Ledger reporter arrived at the clinic Friday shortly after the two had been placed in police vehicles. A ladder was in place along the sidewalk, and a set of posters leaned against it. One had the caption, “God hates the hands that shed innocent blood.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Two anti-abortion protesters arrested outside Lakeland clinic