Datechguy's Blog

Due to airport distance and my flight schedule it became necessary for me to go to mass today. I found out from the security guys that it was a 20 min walk tops to the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception so as it was a beautiful day I took a stroll down.

Beautiful day for a walk in Denver

It turned out it was right by the Occupy crowd but as I was saying my Rosary that really didn’t interest me at the time.

The service ran fairly long

and by the time it was done it was nearing 6 p.m. local time and it was dark. I stared walking back when I saw a huge phalanx of police in gear around the park where the Occupy Denver was camped, or had been camped.

It turned out the police decided it was time to clear the Occupiers out of the park which was great because it was news that was happening right around me so I whipped out my camera and started shooting. The slightly worrisome news was I found myself a single member of blogcon wearing my badge in the midst of the occupods that I’ve been tweaking all day.

As I stared moving closer I approached an officer to ask what the situation was, he informed me I’d have to go to a public relations officer, when I continued toward the police line (which was in the direction to walk back to the hotel an officer in gear commanded me and another person with a camera and tripod to cross the street. We crossed to the center divider. (The person with the camera claimed he was struck by the police officer in question, as I was ahead of him I didn’t see anything of that nature but that’s what he said.)

A large group of the occupy movement driven from the park congregated in the intersection blocking traffic. An officer with a voice that would have served well in Nelson’s Navy shouting through the Atlantic gales declared that if the occupiers didn’t clear the intersection they would be subject to arrest.

At that point the occupiers moved to the other side of the street. The question seemed to be would they stay there and wait for the police to leave and go back or go elsewhere for now and then leave. I called up Smitty from The Other McCain and fed him all the info on what I was seeing since I had no access to my PC and frankly I can’t afford a smart phone or plan.

Considering that there had been three marches on Blogcon 11 being the blogcon guy in the midst might have been an issue but I was pretty much ignored by them. A few of them talked to me and we got along fine. (It’s my impression that as individuals most of these guys are OK. The real danger was if anything had escalated and I got stuck between two clashing sides.)

I talked at length to two fellows, one just before everything got interesting, he didn’t really care for the occupiers and complained that he couldn’t use the park or go in there because of the grief he ended up with. On the other end after the park was cleared I talked to a fellow with a camera named Chuck Dawson who preferred not to go on camera.

Chuck gave his age in the fifties and said he was a lifelong resident of Denver who doesn’t trust republicans or democrats. He thinks the tea party and the occupiers have a bit in common and was frankly suspicious of the spin I’d give what I saw. It was his assertion that the media was biased against the occupy movement. I answered that I don’t make a secret of my conservative bent and people could judge the credibility of what I write based on it. I asked if he was part of the movement, he said not really but pretty much covered it for fun.

He detailed some of the previous confrontations between police and occupiers asserting that police had been using excessive force, he mentioned a 67-year-old woman who as he put it had been roughed up. He also talked about the Denver Police as having a bad rep long before the occupy movement camped in town. He said the joke in Denver was: “If your house is broken into don’t call the police because odds are they’ve already been there.” He also talked about the police union trying to block a reforming potential chief from Louisville and suggested I look up Denver and police corruption online. I told him he was welcome to call the show sometime and make his case if he wishes. See rather significant update below

We shook hands as I left and I headed back home. Obviously my experiences with both the occupods and the Denver Police didn’t correspond with what he said but I’ll let the reader judge one way or the other.

Once I got back to the hotel I found that the dinner and reception was already pretty much over and worse there was no sign of Yid with Lid who had my PC. as of this moment (7:25) I’ve been unable to locate him. I’ve left a message in his room and asked Smitty to tweet that out. I’m currently typing this on a hotel computer so all my video of this is going to have to wait till I have a PC again.

Update: Got my PC back, adding photos and will add video after upload and now will mention my November fundraiser consider subscribing at any level or kicking in if you can.

Update 2: Just had a conversation with a conservative Denver blogger who while not able to confirm the specific incidents corroborated Chuck’s claims about there being issues with the Denver police and there being an ongoing problem.

The general gist of both Chuck and my blogger source is that it’s not so much the Denver PD picking on the Occupy Movement, they claim that this is a behavior problem that the PD has and the occupy movement happens to be the focus of it at this time.

Update 3: adding video to the stream and I should make this point: I did not see any violence by the Denver Police, Chuck claimed it and a local blogger said there were incidents in the past that were iffy. I can not confirm any reports of violence, I’m only reporting what I saw, and informing you of what people have said. My own experience with the officers at blogcon have been entirely positive.

Update 4: Watching local news coverage, according to the coverage the occupy movement was informed that police were going into the camp today and to move stuff out, additionally the claim concerning the police moving the people out and them re-entering was contradicted by the all news reports in local media.

Bottom line the Occupy movement is out of the park, the question becomes, will they come back and what will the police reaction be.

Update 5: Yid with lid has more and the quote of the day

This group which tried so hard to stop BlogCon was stopped themselves was thrown out of their camp hours before the group they tried to silence, packed up and left Denver.

One more thing, I see a lot of tweets concerning “police brutality” in the “occupydenver” stream, but in an internet and video age if Police were acting in such a way, shouldn’t we see a bunch of cellphone videos recording it?