Free Republic

When Gabriel Rench recounts being arrested in front of city hall in Moscow, Idado, while singing hymns with his church last September, one detail especially continues to irk him. “They literally took my hymn book away from me and proceeded to handcuff me,” Rench, 41, said of the officers, who then led him away to the county jail, where he remained for several hours. Moscow, a town of about 25,000 people approximately 80 miles south of Spokane, Washington, made national news last fall when local police arrested three people and cited five others for attending a “peaceful protest” against the...

Police in Moscow, Idaho, arrested three people Wednesday for violating social distancing rules as their church sang hymns and Bible psalms outdoors — an event held, in part, to protest the city mayor’s mask mandate, which runs to January 2021. Officers arrested Gabriel Rench, Rachel Bohnet, and Sean Bohnet, according to Moscow Report, a local independent news outlet. A video uploaded to social media shows Bohnet, a local music teacher, and his wife telling officers they refused to comply with an inaudible order. Moscow Report says the apparent infraction is that they refused to show identification. Footage of the couple’s...