As William Barber’s associates continue to protest every Monday at the General Assembly, it’s interesting to take note of how various public safety officials have responded.
Colin Willoughby – District Attorney for Wake County. As DA, Willoughby is the chief prosecutor in the County. It is his responsibility to get arrested protesters through the criminal justice system after they are arrested. But Willoughby seems reluctant to do his job. Last month, he told Civitas that he was weighing issuing citations (similar to traffic tickets) to protesters instead of arresting them. More recently, he told WRAL that he had not yet decided what to do with Moral Monday arrestees, claiming weakly that he needed video evidence to decide. Mr. Willoughby did not return multiple calls from the Civitas Institute seeking comment.
Sam Pennica – Director of the City-County Bureau of Identification. CCBI is the agency tasked with identifying and processing anyone arrested in Wake County. At Pennica’s direction, the CCBI washed its hands of involvement in Moral Mondays, refusing to fingerprint or photograph detained protesters, ignoring the agency’s own policy. This, Pennica told Civitas, was due to the financial strain incurred by the agency: “I gotta look at what’s in the best interest of this organization from a fiscal standpoint. And here we are near the end of the fiscal year and I don’t want to run out of money. In fact, I’ll be very close.”
This, if true, would be a reasonable explanation. But in public records obtained by Civitas, we learned that the CCBI has spent only $1,292 in overtime. For a government agency with a $5 million annual budget, Pennica’s claim strains all credibility.
In contrast with some of these public safety officials, the General Assembly police has only sixteen officers, but have been scrupulously involved in every step of the arrest process. General Assembly police officers – all the while calm and courteous – arrest protesters, and then accompany them to the Wake County Detention Center. Once there, they assist the Wake County Sheriff’s Office with processing the arrestees.
A final note: Civitas discovered an apparent irony with regard to law enforcement operations at the General Assembly. The Raleigh Police Department has been assisting the General Assembly police with crowd control. Given the relatively small size of the General Assembly police department, the Raleigh Police Department actually provides most of the manpower at each protest.
According to the organizers (HKonJ) of Moral Monday, Teamsters Local 391 is a “coalition partner” of the weekly protests. One of the members of Teamsters Local 391 happens to be the Raleigh Police Protective Association, a police union that comprises “over 600 active Raleigh Police members.” So it would appear that the leaders of the police union are encouraging and organizing the very people that the members of the union later have to arrest. Do police officers know how much needless extra work their union is causing them?
Perhaps there needs to be a slow down in the processing…perhaps 24 hours should be required.
I will say I’m sick of Moral Monday Moonbat Morass. They are discourteous to the state worker pedestrians leaving work, and clog up traffic and parking decks, making egress from downtown both dangerous and annoying.
An obvious explanation, that public officials are sympathetic to the protesters, goes unmentioned.
Beth, the current legislature is both more dangerous and more annoying than direct civic engagement.
What current legislation is “more dangerous” csoeder? This “direct civic engagement” is nothing more then progressives/statists having a hissy.
As your fearless leader once said (that would be Obama for those from Rio Linda), we won, you lost – get over it.
Yes, things are looking bleak – our budget is improving, we are trimming unnecessary government intrusion, and removing excessive give-aways designed to enhance dependency.
In SPITE of you and those like you (statists), we will balance the budget, respect the laws and Constitution, and begin to unwind the adolescent behavior and attitude infesting the government.
Just imagine the “danger” of being forced to actually prove who you are when you vote! Gasp… the audacity of it all. Sadly for you,this will mean you can only vote one time.
Just imagine the annoyance of actually teaching in schools the truth of how our nation came to be, and the truth about our founders and of the Constitution of the United States (as opposed to the “collective” approach as represented by the Common Core garbage now being imposed by the regime.
Yes, there is always going to be screaming as you remove the government teat and expect folks to share some responsibility in life. One way or another, the giveaways will come to an end….
I am praying the General Assembly hurries up & passes all the good bills like Voter ID & Tax Reform etc. wonderful bills and ends this session so the SPOILED BRATS will go home.
While exercising the first amendment is encouraged, civil disobedience is not. I find it curious that a number of the protestors in the mix are university professors. I always used to think that teachers and professors would go out of their way in life to be good examples and follow the rules (in this case, respect the law, and the process of creating laws by demonstrating peaceful expression of opposing views). This is eye opening for me. I wonder if “Moral Mondays” might be misnamed?
Constitution NOW: Threatening to close public universities, aka eating your seed corn? Sounds pretty damned dangerous to me. These folks are such clowns they make the last bunch, who tried to outlaw sea level rise, look sane, sober, and benevolent!
I think it’s hilarious that you call me a statist.
Mary, why on earth do you discourage civil disobedience? It’s responsible for such great leaps forward in our society as the civil rights movement. Ever heard of Thoreau?
You are correct that many of the protesters are professors. Many are clergy as well. You can learn more about their demographics here:
Let me see if I understand your point, csoeder. If a valid election in NC results in the majority of voters electing individuals to carry out policies that they believe are best for the the State’s future, and you disagree those policies; it’s okay for you to act like a three year old having a temper tantrum in the middle of WalMart.
The fact that many protesters are college professors shouldn’t surprise anyone. Although some of the professors I met while pursuing my primary and advance degrees were most admirable, others were the least capable and ethically challenged people I have ever met. I’m reminded of the character (a professor at some level) in C.H. who encouraged his students to break the law and vote twice for Obama. It’s doubtful the he is an aberration to higher education.
George Lipscomb:
I find it bizarre that you think that civic involvement ends every 2 years when the votes are counted.
Your characterization of the protests as ‘tantrums’ is completely inaccurate
Csoeder,
You really spent a lot of time making your own powerpoints to make the same point as Civitas. Now that is creepy. The only thing unique is the last graph you call a rising movement, I call running out of people to arrest…that is until they ship some more in from NY or Ohio.
What ‘same point’ do you think that I am making? Their data clearly show that the protesters are a diverse group, homegrown, and fairly representative of NC.
” The only thing unique is the last graph you call a rising movement, I call running out of people to arrest…that is until they ship some more in from NY or Ohio.”
How do you derive that conclusion from Fig. 13? The trend is clear, even without a linear regression. A linear trend obviously won’t continue indefinitely, but it’s not at all clear where you are getting your conclusions from. Could you elaborate?
The some point you make is the same as Civitas. Although you leave out most of the R vs. D and anything that does not make your point. Your point is that they are geographically diverse, ok I guess? that could be true to some extent. But geographic is not really a true “diversity” test. Also, your occupation graph makes the same statement in a prettier manner, but it still shows retired, public sector, and “pastor/minister” as the main demographic. Thanks for making the data pretty. Maybe Civitas needs to hire you for Powerpoint presentations.
Running out of people to arrest, in that you only have a core of say 800-1500 true NC citizens coming to the circus. You are supposed to be barred from being arrested twice (although it looks like they are going to get by that by issuing citations instead of trespassing)without being brought up on contempt charges. So, they are quickly running out of people they do not have to ship in from elsewhere. Plus, it is likely people are going to lose interest when they see their lives are not changed for the worse so Big Bill is running out of time and people.
They are geographically, racially, occupationally, and so forth, especially when compared to the background demographic. I don’t know what your point is regarding party affiliation; there is no question about the political leanings of the movement. The question is, considering the Republicans’ track record of things like outlawing sea level rise, why should I care? It seems like the sensible half of the state is doing the protesting.
“shows retired, public sector, and “pastor/minister” as the main demographic”
What you are seeing is called *leadership*. And while they may be the biggest bins, if you had read the accompanying text, you would know that they are still minor proportions, on the order or ~10% each, with many more smaller bins. That’s called diversity.
Also, while I didn’t do a public/private sector comparison, Civitas does and their numbers show more than twice as many privately employed arrestees as publically employed ones. Fail!
“Running out of people to arrest, in that you only have a core of say 800-1500 true NC citizens coming to the circus”
[citation needed]
“So, they are quickly running out of people they do not have to ship in from elsewhere.”
Yeah, Civitas’s data demolish the outside agitators rhetoric, remember?
I assure you that PowerPoint was not used. The data was stored in .xls files using gnumeric, processed with pylab, and the graphics created with matplotlib and qgis. But thanks for your compliments. I would add that my infographics are not only prettier, but more meaningful than Civitas’s. A pie chart containing arrests by city? Really?
You still have not presented that it is a cross section of NC. No matter what you do to massage or present the data in your high powered databases and programs, it still shows a limited population who cares.
As far as R vs. D, you make my point there. At a minimum this state is 50% each, so when you admittedly do not have half of the typical demograpic included then you should know you do not have a typical NC crowd. What you do have is as I have said, the retired pastor democrat who is trying to re-live the 60’s.
You can respond to this, but considering the source data there is no way you are ever going to be correct in saying these are typical NC people….unless you falsify the data.
And you are welcome…..the world needs more pretty graphs and charts.
I will agree, since you have limited the population to democrat retired pastors primarily in the triangle then you are right. But I would not expect them to be totally in touch with that segment as that is not who elected them….and is not the typical NC resident. So yeah, we have some common ground between that and your pretty graphs…..
I said physical reality. Remember the sea level bill?
I referenced that too…..although I was talking about actual reality. Maybe you actually mean quantum reality or something, if you mean that then it actaully could be your own little reality…congratulations.
That is true, the climate has changed for millions of years on earth. That big ball of fire up in the sky is always changing output to where is heats and cools. Good observation!
Geological climate change takes place on geological time scales. The current warming episode is taking place on a geologically abrupt time scale – which is the problem.
To the extent that there are historical analogs to today, they are ecological disasters like the PETM.
The sun is not the cause of current global warming. We know this from direct measurements of the sun’s activity, as well as by fingerprints – stratospheric cooling, nights warming faster than days, and winters warming faster than summers.
Any other misconceptions you need cleared up while the tide rises?