Occupy Minneapolis has cost Hennepin County over $ 200K
Sheriff: Box of rocks, bricks found at Mpls. protest site; protesters say it was planted
Excerpt:
The Hennepin County sheriff's office says its costs of patrolling a downtown Minneapolis protest have topped $200,000 in just over two weeks.
As of Sunday, the sheriff's office says the OccupyMN protest has cost it more than $128,000 in overtime and $71,300 in regular pay since the protest began Oct. 7.
Comment: Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly doesn't mean that one can disrupt society and run up these kind of expenses!
This sounds like a 'talking-point' item. It really is the choice of law enforcement and officials as how to to waste it's OT pay and regular pay. Assuming the Occupy norm is indeed basically peaceful assembly with non-violent protestors, perhaps with some non-violent civil disobedience, there shouldn't really be a need for lots of extra police time.
ReplyDeletePutting on too much of a show of police force invites unnecessary trouble and seems to create stronger group cohesion within protesters. Every time Occupy gets forcefully evicted, this creates martyrs, sympathy and more energy for the groups involved, and 'proves' there's a real enemy out there for them to protest. (Even if there is a real enemy this may not be the smartest way to take it on.)
Nothing encourages true believers like persecution. The smarter law enforcement in Milwaukee use just a bare minimum of attention. When a group 'took a bridge' in the downtown, the law enforcement posse just waited for them to get cold and leave, no arrests, no beatings, no pepper-spray, no front-page headlines.