How To Break Up a Peaceful Protest Peacefully
The eviction of Occupy St. Louis was surprisingly calm.
Occupy St. Louis was evicted recently, but it didn’t end in blood and tears. No pepper-spray was deployed. No protesters found themselves on the other end of a baton. In fact, if reports are accurate, police in St. Louis decided to opt for wits over brute strength, and common sense over riot gear.
Via Radley Balko, Brad Hicksdescribes how the eviction of Occupy St. Louis went down:
The first thing they did was the one that baffled me the most, at first: they gave the protesters nearly 36 hours notice, as opposed to the 20 to 60 minutes’ notice other cities gave. It has taken me almost a week, and the mistakes of several other cities, to see why that was a good idea, because here’s how they did it. Early afternoon on Thursday, they gave the protesters
