Police ensuring that Occupiers remove their tents, even in the inclement weather.
9:45 am | They were, to use an adventure-film cliché, a ragtag bunch, the 20 or so OLBers who’d been out there all the wet day Sunday. And they decided they were going to leave their tents up, which they informed an inquiring LBPD officer at a little after 10:00pm last night.
Predictably, the police were not going to let this stand.
OLBers said Sunday night that since Tuesday’s city council meeting, police have been allowing OLB to use tents during the day within Lincoln Park (a sort of ex post facto fulfillment of Chief Jim McDonnell’s claim the LBPD had been doing this all along). Good for OLB, because Sunday was a Long Beach oddity: it actually rained. Bad weather for an occupation.
Occupiers of Long Beach awaiting the promised arrival of LBPD.
That’s why this bunch decided they deserved to be left in peace in their temporary shelters on the sidewalk. Well, that and the First Amendment, they said.
First a single police unit arrived across the street and began the loudspeaker announcements.1 Then a few officers materialized at the back for the park. Shortly after, nine cars and a van were on scene with police officers matching the protesters body for body.
Until now the LBPD has been citing — quite correctly, if you disagree with OLB’s argument that the First Amendment supersedes the municipal code on this point — LBMC Sec. 9.42.110 as prohibiting the use of tents on sidewalks. But on Sunday police cited 14.04.040, “Public Walkway Occupancy Standards” — odd, because this section does not seem to disallow anything the OLBers were doing or wanted to do Sunday night — including having their tents on the sidewalk — except keeping their E-Z Up up, since it’s over six feet high (see 14.04.040(c)). The rest of the pertinent stuff concerns how much the walkway can be obstructed, and OLB were not in violation of any of this stuff (there must be five feet of unobstructed area, the obstructions must not interfere with pedestrian visibility/mobility, et cetera).2
While the police may have been misinformed and misinforming, the rest of the point is moot, because the municode disallows tents, period. Tension between the police and protestors was evident, with OLBers very reluctant to give ground and LBPDers passing from issuing orders to moving into the protestors’ personal space more quickly than has been status quo during the Occupation.
But in the end police disassembled the tents without incident and carted them away (though allowing a couple of OLBers to retrieve property — in one case, medicine, according to an OLBer supporting the cause even in the cold despite liver problems because “it is so important”), filming the proceedings with multiple cameras.
Police officers and OLBers mutually recording one another with their cameras.
The OLBers had cameras of their own, of course. “Police need malpractice insurance,” said one weary OLBer, camera rolling (or whatever it is these iPhone cameras do).
And then the police receded into the night, with OLB left sans the most significant of their shelters. It wasn’t raining, but a long, cold stretch of Night 39 had begun.
Police removing OLBer tents.
1 The announcements informed OLB that the park was closed and instructed them to vacate it. The OLBers weren’t actually in the park (as they were eager to point out), but the camping issue was also being mentioned (as in: it ain’t allowed). “We are not camping,” the OLBers reponded in chant.
2 I suppose there’s a possible exception at Subsection D — “The obstruction shall be kept in a good state of repair and in a safe, sanitary and attractive condition” (emphasis added) — since “attractive” is a relative term.