*UPDATE*
Long day, but I wanted to close it out with what we know.
After the Ch9 and Bryan Sears interview, yes, they were both given another citation for Trespassing on State Property and a COMAR violation. We were standing at the usual spot for the interviews and afterwards Chief Wilson and Lt. Labs came over to us and informed them both of the additional citations and asked them to go over to their car which was on the State House side of LM.
Lt. Labs was with the guys and Chief Wilson and I had a conversation in which he reiterated the same reasoning (safety/near misses of pedestrians/general Death Race 2000 mayhem) that was in their statement of earlier today. I asked him who made the complaint, was it a pedestrian or legislator? He told me that there WAS NO COMPLAINT CALLED IN. He could tell that I was a little incredulous and I asked him if Sgt Pope had received orders from higher up the chain of command or was the decision to remove and subsequently arrest his alone? The Chief replied that it was his decision as the supervisor on duty.
I then told him that we have been there every Monday night since the session started and asked why we weren't informed of this change of policy before last night. And that we weren't actually informed last night as Sgt Pope gave NO REASON on why we had to move but simply stated that "things have changed" and then started barking out orders on where to stand and where not to stand or be arrested. He had no answer for that but stated that we were not informed earlier because he didn't have the budget to staff an officer out there every Monday night. I challenged him on that and told him that not only were there officers on site every Monday but that one officer in tactical gear with a K9 unit sniffed us down every time.
He said that the officer with the K9 might have been AACo. I then asked him if the MCP had a K9 named "Bo" and he replied that indeed they did. Every PP member knows who Officer Bo is, the Chief's statements today MIGHT have been less than truthful.
Long day, but I wanted to close it out with what we know.
After the Ch9 and Bryan Sears interview, yes, they were both given another citation for Trespassing on State Property and a COMAR violation. We were standing at the usual spot for the interviews and afterwards Chief Wilson and Lt. Labs came over to us and informed them both of the additional citations and asked them to go over to their car which was on the State House side of LM.
Lt. Labs was with the guys and Chief Wilson and I had a conversation in which he reiterated the same reasoning (safety/near misses of pedestrians/general Death Race 2000 mayhem) that was in their statement of earlier today. I asked him who made the complaint, was it a pedestrian or legislator? He told me that there WAS NO COMPLAINT CALLED IN. He could tell that I was a little incredulous and I asked him if Sgt Pope had received orders from higher up the chain of command or was the decision to remove and subsequently arrest his alone? The Chief replied that it was his decision as the supervisor on duty.
I then told him that we have been there every Monday night since the session started and asked why we weren't informed of this change of policy before last night. And that we weren't actually informed last night as Sgt Pope gave NO REASON on why we had to move but simply stated that "things have changed" and then started barking out orders on where to stand and where not to stand or be arrested. He had no answer for that but stated that we were not informed earlier because he didn't have the budget to staff an officer out there every Monday night. I challenged him on that and told him that not only were there officers on site every Monday but that one officer in tactical gear with a K9 unit sniffed us down every time.
He said that the officer with the K9 might have been AACo. I then asked him if the MCP had a K9 named "Bo" and he replied that indeed they did. Every PP member knows who Officer Bo is, the Chief's statements today MIGHT have been less than truthful.