Tents.

Editor,

Police officers and police departments possess broad discretion with regard to which laws they enforce and when they enforce them. Every jay walker, for example, is not cited. Every double-parker is not ticketed.

So the obvious question is: why did the Denver police choose to “move into the park to tear down illegal tents?”

Precisely how did those tents threaten public safety, and if they did, did the threat they posed outweigh the risk of potential injury to peaceful protesters as a result of aggressive police activity?

“Tearing down” the tents is not the only option the police had. Turning a blind eye is one. Negotiating terms with the occupiers according to which tents could be used is another.

This incident seems to have been preceded by several years of bad relations between what has been reported to have been an excessively violent and unresponsive Denver Police Department and the community they are sworn to protect. Attacking “tents” could be interpreted as a rogue police department imposing its vision of public safety on a community that understands public safety differently.

What exactly were the circumstances that resulted in this law about “illegal tents” being passed in the first place? What is it about the intent of the legislative body at the time that it enacted that law that necessitated a full-on military-style assault by hundreds of heavily armed police, against an unarmed peaceful assembly of citizens exercising their 1st Amendment rights, to “tear down” tents?

Who ordered this attack and why?

Re: "Occupy Denver protesters, law enforcement officers clash; 20 arrested" (10/30/2011)