"St. Paddy's 7" first day in court

second day coverage is below

In front of City Hall

Mary in front of City Hall

Eric discusses politics with a passerby

Fern and Tony

Val and Tony make it look easy

Tony and Eric fight the wind

Fern and Tony hold on tight

"St. Paddy's Seven" wait in Municipal Courtroom 201

Thomas Jefferson rolled over in his grave today.

The DA's office (Scott Patlin) first tried to get the judge(Carol Carter) to recuse herself because she apparently knows someone in our group. (Bad judge. You go to your room. I mean sequester yourself in your chambers) No idea what that's about, yet. She was not amused and said it's not a conflict for an arraignment hearing. The DA's office, apparently considering this a lost cause with dropped charges to come later, sent someone more interested in the judge's personal life and casual acquaintances than jurisprudence.

Then as each was called up to plead, the DA's office amended (changed) the charges from failure to disperse when ordered, to blocking a passageway or assembly. The police can't make their case for failure to disperse because those arrested were not told to disperse and policy and procedure was violated. They were too pissed off to think straight and follow their training. Just who pacifists want, armed to the teeth, in a crowd of thousands.

Standard protocol, not that it's policy of the CSPD, is to give 3 verbal warnings, the last stated as this is your last warning to disperse or be arrested. In a planned Civil Disobedience, that's when those not wanting to be arrested leave and those that want to be arrested stay, and are peacefully, professionally, and courteously processed. This was not a planned CD action, and the police did not follow procedure, so can't make their case. Many arrested never were told to disperse, just got punishment applied by street "justice".

This "amended" charge was not revealed to anyone before the arraignment, (another abstractionist violation of protocol) so no one could possibly provide a defense. Don't touch that dial, it's gets more strange. Bill Durland asked for the arrest report a couple of days after the parade and was told it was $10 and would be mailed to him. "OK, no problem, here's my 10 bucks."

His $10 was mailed back to him and he was told they couldn't comply with his request to see his own arrest report!

WHAT????

Did you try control P? Call tech support? Reboot Windows? It's not fucking Geico for God's sake. Even a caveman can do it!

Then the GAGzette publishes another hatchet job on Monday (retracted in part n Tuesday) quoting from the arrest report Bill Durland, former judge and co-chair of the El Paso County ACLU, arrested in the parade, couldn't buy for $10! Michael deYoanna of the INDY said he has a copy too. Both papers in town have the arrest report and NONE of the arrested do!

The police brutality continues and now they're dragging the constitution and US code through the streets! Personally, I don't find the parchment of the constitution makes good toilet paper. It's a little rough, and who knows what they used in that 1789 ink?

Anyway, they all moved for continuance to give them time to understand these abrupt changes and the next court date is May 7, 1:30pm, district 3. No word if the judge will recuse herself for knowing someone who believes in the constitution, as the DA moved.

The 90 days and $500 may be the same for the new charges, but this is a reduction in charges, and in my opinion, harder to prove (burden of proof is still on the accuser even in Colorado Springs and Berlin) than the "orders" to disperse that few, if any, heard. We moved over to allow the parade to go around, as all the photos and video shows, so there was never any blocking of the parade and certainly no intent to block the parade reported by every media outlet but the INDY. The police blocked the road off for the parade, so that wasn't us. Cars, floats, horses, marching bands, politicians (no political comments, please) all went around and the parade was not blocked, which we were glad to see and accommodated.

The issue of the police brutality in executing the parade official's revocation of our permit, for ambiguous reasons, is the issue, and not whatever paperwork violation may have occurred, that we tried to explain to the "authorities", none of whom identified themselves. The brutilization of Elizabeth was the direct result of trying to get identities of those saying we didn't have the permit when we knew we did and knew they were wrong.

Stay tuned. Survivor, Colorado Springs will be right back.

Second day in court action before trial

Trial date was set for July 20

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