Los Angeles Won’t Prosecute Occupiers, Offers Class Instead
The Occupy protest slouched through the City of Angels and left an enormous amount of filth, trash, traffic disruption and loud exclamations of anarchism, while demonstrating only the abject ignorance and stupidity that middle class students receive from college professors at taxpayer expense.
You would think that for all the acts of violence that the city would be eager to prosecute those arrested in order to deter the behavior. You would be wrong.
The Los Angeles City attorney has notifed those arrested that while they believe they have enough evidence to convict them, they will not be seeking this prosecution if they agree to attend a class on the first amendment, and a “scared straight” movie.
At no cost to them. Parking included.
There will be no public record of charges filed, and agreeing to this class is not an admission of guilt.
Prior to this offering, many occupying perpetrators had been convicted and punished lightly. A document sent out from OccupyLA Legal Team mailing list describes what they could face if they didn’t take the deal:
“One person arrested… at the November 17 action at the Bank of America received a sentence of 3 years probation, 30 hours of community service and fines of approximately $1,700. One person was ordered to read Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and write a 300-word essay on the book.”
So how did the City of Los Angeles go from convicting and punishing with parole and fines, to a free class?
Well, we can credit the National Lawyers Guild for interceding on the occupiers’ behalf.
In case you don’t remember, the last time the NLG was in the headlines, it was because one of their lawyers was convicted of helping Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Blind Sheik”, who was in prison for planning bombings in New York after the first Twin Towers attack.
NLG lawyer Lynne Stewart was convicted for, “conspiring to provide material support to the conspiracy to kill and kidnap persons in a foreign country, and with conspiring to conceal and disguise Abdel Rahman’s service as personnel to prepare for and carry out that conspiracy.”
Stewart faced up to 5 years in prison, but was only given 28 months.
The occupy Los Angeles protesters had been arrested after being tossed out of their encampment, after which the city had to clean up 30 tons, that’s 60,000 pounds, of their filthy trash. It was so awful that police and garbage workers had to wear HAZMAT suits to clean it up.
“Bottles of urine, decaying food, and other disgusting health and safety hazards are everywhere, as is the overwhelming foul stench in the area.”
Over the two months that the protesters illegally occupied Los Angeles public spaces, the city incurred a cost of $2.3 million dollars as a result, $400,000 coming from just the repairs of the lawn they destroyed at LA City Hall.
Some have called for the city to sue for the damages that the smug cop-car-crapping degenerates incurred, but that’s becoming increasingly doubtful, as the City Attorney negotiating down to a slap on the wrist, most likely because they’ve bungled the arrests in the first place, and had to dismiss many cases already.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles throws a big party incurring more costs from moving an enormous rock from a quarry and having it carted to the LA Contemporary Museum of Art.
