This week's Rainbow Family Gathering will be short at least two members after federal magistrates on Tuesday ordered the men to remain in custody for the time being.

Meantime, both men challenged their arrests and the alleged facts that led up to felony charges of assaulting, resisting or impeding a U.S. Forest Service officer after two separate incidents last week.

Ernie Gunnoe, 23, is accused of recruiting a group of people to prevent officers and a tow-truck operator from removing cars that were blocking access to a Forest Service road in the area. A police officer was hit in the face and the neck with a rock during the event, though Gunnoe is not alleged to have thrown it.

"How am I to be blamed for something when I was a quarter-mile away from the rock-throwing incident?" Gunnoe asked after U.S. Magistrate Brooke Wells deemed him a danger to the community and refused a request to release him from jail.

Wells said she would revisit the issue at a hearing scheduled for next Tuesday.

At a later hearing, U.S. Magistrate Samuel Alba allowed Edward James Jenkins to be released from the Salt Lake County Jail. However, Alba ordered he be held in a Salt Lake halfway house under 24-hour surveillance.

Jenkins is accused of distracting a U.S. Forest Service officer while he attempted to enforce a road closure last Friday and later kicking an officer as he was being arrested.

In court, 61-year-old Jenkins accused the Forest Service officers of harassing Gathering participants.

"They come every year to the gatherings and every year they target certain people," Jenkins said. "I'm targeted over and over again. . . . They push situations and make things so it appears that they're right and we're wrong."

Jenkins has been arrested at gatherings in Florida, Arizona and Montana for similar conduct against law enforcement officers. He pleaded guilty to pushing a female Forest Service officer in the chest with a flashlight during the 1998 Rainbow Gathering in Arizona.

Becky Banker, public information officer for the national incident management team stationed at this year's Gathering, said 38 to 40 officers are working in the area to maintain peace among the participants.

"Part of their responsibility this year is to make sure the permit holder is complying with the permit, and that means being down in the Gathering," Banker said. "If laws are broken, it is their responsibility to enforce the laws and the regulations on national forest land."

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E-MAIL: awelling@desnews.com