No Need for 24/7 Police Presence at #OccupyBoston

One of the least credible attacks on Occupy Boston by local politicians pundits and press has been the idea that its Dewey Square encampment - judged to be a form of protected free speech last week when Judge Frances McIntyre issued a temporary injunction preventing the City of Boston from dismantling it - is costing the public a large amount of money. Due mostly to police overtime costs. The figure currently being tossed about for the ongoing police presence at the Occupy Boston camp is roughly $600 000 to date. However the main reason the police are there is not to keep the peace - the occupiers do that themselves. Instead uniformed and undercover members of the Boston Police are there to watch the camp on behalf of the city government and the powers-that-be. And given Mayor Thomas Menino’s well-known desire to get rid of the camp the recent wave of Occupy camp evictions elsewhere in the US and the heavily covered eviction of Occupy Boston’s attempt to establish a second camp next to the Dewey Square camp in October it’s reasonable to assume that the police on-site are now remaining especially vigilant for any problem with the camp that would give Menino an excuse to remove it under the terms of the court order. So even if one believes that these kinds of costs are part of the price of running a major city and that 600 large is not that big a deal in the context of the multi-billion dollar city budget it’s still ludicrous to lay the blame for such costs at the feet of the occupiers. Instead the blame should be laid on Menino and anyone in city government that thinks a group of non-violent protestors with a proven track record of running their own affairs require an armed police presence 24/7. After all the number of residents at the camp is rarely larger than the average apartment building. So it seems that the acceptable level of community policing required would be no more than one beat cop walking or driving by now and then throughout the average day (with perhaps a slight increase in police numbers during demonstrations). Especially since the democratic principles of the Occupy movement globally require that occupiers go to great lengths to manage their camps without turning to local police or any other law enforcement agency - who are all looked at critically by occupiers because of the negative role they often play in disenfranchised neighborhoods and the even more negative role they play in protecting the property and privilege of monied elites. Assuming that the Occupy Boston camp lasts past this weekend - when the temporary injunction protecting it ends - Open Media Boston therefore calls on the city to remove its standing police presence and go back to normal policing levels in Dewey Square. In the interest of the very fiscal responsibility that so concerns the more conservative representatives of metropolitan public discourse (along with the camp’s “sanitation” issues which are being scrutinized far more consistently than many of Boston’s less tony neighborhoods alas). And more importantly in the interest of democracy itself. Because amazingly enough it is possible for people to run their own communities without armed guards hovering over them day and night. I believe the expression we use for such arrangements is “civil society.” Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston Bookmark/Search this post with: Delicious Digg StumbleUpon Reddit Newsvine Facebook Google Yahoo Technorati