Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The Park Police Are Looking Stupider...

Some of you recall that the Park Police were the ones who created a SNAFU on discovering the body of Vince.......ah, well. That's ancient history, right?

So to make up for it, they're making idiots of themselves again!! (Original story here.)

...a uniformed Park Police officer recently paid a visit to the home of Brooke Oberwetter, the Jefferson Memorial dancer arrested last weekend (there were several other people there at the time).

They’re apparently now adding a second charge of “demonstrating without a permit,” and they’re bumping her case from D.C. court to federal court. They’re also expunging the arrest from her record.

The combox sheds a bit of light on the matter:

...no permit can be issued for a demonstration at the Memorial, and it sounds like the Park Police are interpreting this as prohibiting demonstrations under 25 people as well. The “interfering with agency function” charge is basically failure to obey a lawful order. Oberwetter needs to take this to trial and argue that this was either not a demonstration, or that 36 CFR 7.96 doesn’t apply because the gathering was under 25 people.

This is a case of the Park Police jumping the shark, plain and simple.

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