Saturday, November 12, 2011

St. Louis City Violates Their Own Rules During Occupy Eviction

For a group that decided that all-of-a-sudden they needed to follow the precise dictates of every rule and ordinance, the Slay administration didn't do a very good job of following their own rules. Here's the text of the eviction notice they sent to OccupySTL:
PUBLIC NOTICE: The City of St. Louis has a policy in place for handling and storing unattended property in downtown parks. The parks dept will gather up the property, put it in bags, tag it and store it in a secure place. To retrieve any items you leave in a downtown park, go to 1212 N. 13th between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m, this Saturday Nov. 12th or Sunday, Nov. 13th. After that, you can call the Parks Department at 314-289-5300. You are responsible for securing your valuables and personal belongings. We will use our best efforts to return belongings you leave behind.
Yet during the raid they threw signs and tarps into a garbage truck to be crushed:

In fact, they even destroyed and trashed the media tent:


Lesson for the day: following the rules is really, really, really important... except when it isn't.

3 comments:

  1. I don't know why the city of St Louis threw away the signs, perhaps they didn't consider it debris and not actual property? I'm not saying this was the case, just trying to find some insight...

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  2. To be clear, there was a large shipping type container filled with bags that were tagged, filled with items that were removed from tents, when I looked it was maybe a third full from the bottom, I took pictures. I talked to the city worker who was doing this Work, he even gave one of the occupiers a bag of books he had just removed, when the guy requested them. He told me that there would be a notice in the paper stating where these items could be retrieved. He also collected palettes and loaded them onto a separate truck, I assume they can be retrieved as well. So the vast majority of items removed from the park should be available for retrieval.

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  3. A garbage truck. Nice touch Mayor Slay. When the police arrest someone, the possessions that are with them cannot lawfully be left behind for an over active garbage man to simply snatch up. They are to be itemized and inventoried as police protocol dictates. Well done with the media tent btw. I'm sure you are winning some real favor with them.

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