The packed house attending Wednesday night’s mayoral debate got more than a lesson in current city issues. They got a lesson in free speech.

Midway through the two-hour debate of public safety issues between incumbent Mayor R.T. Rybak, Green Party endorsee Farheen Hakeem, and Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin at the Woman’s Club, candidate Marcus Harcus stood up in the balcony and demanded to be included in the forum. He was accompanied by a boisterous group of supporters who chanted, “Let Marcus Harcus speak! Let Marcus Harcus Speak!”

Moderator Pat Werner called for order, repeatedly asking Harcus to confer with the event’s organizers, who had decided earlier to limit the number of candidates in the forum. Harcus, however, would not be denied. “This is an obstruction of justice,” he cried. “I want to talk on stage. I’m no damn token.”

The standoff continued for several minutes as Werner called for security to remove Harcus, who refused to back down, asking spectators to raise their hands if they wanted to hear him speak. Hands shot up throughout the audience—and on stage, where Hakeem and Rybak both raised their hands. “Talk to the organizers,” Rybak said. “Let’s get Marcus on stage.”

Harcus and his supporters came down to the main floor of the auditorium, and the candidate was ushered backstage, where he stayed for some time, as negotiations apparently ensued. Eventually, he emerged and Rybak offered him his chair.

The disturbance turned what had been a rather bland affair featuring Rybak and McLaughlin sniping at one another with Hakeem in the middle calling for civility (“Let’s play nice,” she said at one point, before quipping, “The tough math teacher comes out.”) into an exercise in free speech.

As he has done from the beginning of his campaign, McLaughlin charged that the mayor has come to the public safety issue too late and has no viable plan for dealing with rising crime. He criticized Rybak for rejecting a police pension deal that would have pumped $24 million into the city’s budget. “There was money to hire police, but the mayor sent it back to the State Capitol,” he said.

Rybak defended his commitment to public safety, arguing that it has been a priority for his administration from the beginning of his term and that he has made the tough decisions required during lean budget times. “It’s the most serious work we do at City Hall,” he said, noting that he is working to add 71 more police officers to the force, initiated an effort to target chronic offenders, and hired a new Police Chief who is reforming the Police Department.

The mayor also noted that he favored combining the city’s Police Department with that of the Park Board and that city police should be working in the schools. “School police should not be Park Police,” he said.

Hakeem stressed her experience as a community organizer and suggested that she would push for more diversity and cultural training in the Police Department. She criticized Police Chief William McManus’s lack of responsiveness to the city’s Civilian Review Authority, and stressed the importance of living-wage jobs and affordable housing as deterrents to crime. “Gangs, drugs, and guns—that’s not a fair choice” for the city’s youth, she said.

On the city’s budget limitations, Hakeem said she would have used the additional local government aid payments the city is receiving for training the existing police force rather than hiring more officers.

With Harcus joining the fray, the forum lost some of its formality. Addressing a question about how he would maintain public safety spending without raising the city’s debt, Harcus grabbed the microphone from the table he shared with Rybak and strode to the front of the stage. “I don’t even want to bother with this question,” he said, as some members of the audience began to boo and heckle him.

“Sit down,” cried one member of the audience, and Harcus retreated to the table, before offering up a vague suggestion that the city should “get rid of wasteful spending.”

Later, when Harcus suggested establishing a citywide lottery as a way of funding public safety, Rybak quipped, “I think you just sold your first lottery ticket.”

In an interview after the debate, Harcus, who ran for mayor four years ago and said he was shut out of debates then, as well, explained that he wasn’t going to stand for it this time around. “I just can’t sit back and watch injustice,” he said. “I had to stand up for real democracy.”