Under pressure to make arrests, police and troopers push back against mayor and governer

www.timesunion.com...

ALBANY -- In a tense battle of wills, state troopers and Albany police held off making arrests of dozens of protesters near the Capitol over the weekend even as Albany's mayor, under pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration, had urged his police chief to enforce a city curfew.

The above article says the reason the police and state troopers decided to not enforce the mayor and governers orders, is because they believed that low-level arrests for trespassing were not neccesary, were afraid the situation could become out of hand if arrests were made, and the protesters were peaceful.

In addition to the above...

A city police source said his department also was reluctant to damage what he considers to be good community relations that have taken years to rebuild. In addition, the crowd included elderly people and many others who brought their children with them.

"There was a lot of discussion about how it would look if we started pulling people away from their kids and arresting them ... and then what do we do with the children?" one officer said.

And what did the police "report"?

Around midnight Friday, police leaders reported that the protesters were confined to city sidewalks and therefore they were not in violation of the city's curfew governing park land. But in truth, the protesters had set up tents in the park and several dozen slept there.

Here's another article from "RawStory"

www.rawstory.com...

Raw Story says about the same as the first article, but gives more precise numbers. It says there were around 700 protesters were occupying the park and about 30 tents remained over the weekend.

Good on them.

I hope they do not get back-lash from the higher ups.

Wow, nice to hear some discretion being used instead of the old "we're just following orders" cop out. Good for them!

And thus, the movement grows stronger. More and more LEO are realizing that these are not criminals or stoned college kids in these protests. Do not be surprised to see this happening elsewhere, including in NYC. If they stop enforcing the orders of the mayors/governors, then TPTB are going to have a whole new set of troubles.

I guess the "Us vs Them" mentality isn't so appealing anymore when "Them" meaning "We The People" start showing up for the fight.