Rallies at City-County Building now require police?

I’ve been going to rallies in front of the City-County Building for 20 years. It’s a routine – rally, register, wait, testify, wait and watch, hope for a good vote and go home. I’ve never seen it involve police until yesterday.  What was different? 

When I parked my car and looked up from the parking meter payments I saw neon yellow out of the corner of my eye. I thought that was strange and quickly realized it was police. Odd. So I took a picture.

I crossed the street on the outer loop, more neon.

I approached the rally.  Nice attendance for a cold day.

Wait, more neon! 

At this point, I just had to say/ask “I’ve been to rallies here for 20 years and I’ve never seen police here, what are you doing here?”  The first response was “protecting the people”.  Ok, “what?!”  They say “its because of the counter protesters”.  So I walk up to the crowd and see some folks I know and I ask, “where are the counter protesters?”  First person doesn’t know.  Second person doesn’t know.  Third person doesn’t know.  I blow it off and walk upstairs and set up my audio equipment.  I look out the window, they’re still there, doing not much at all.

People are done with the rally, walk upstairs and register.

When they all go sit down, I see this.

Seriously.  A 6 officers, including an lieutenant?  What a waste of time.  Since I know Lt. McCaw I ask him what’s up.  He says that since they refuse to talk to the police they don’t know what is going to happen so they had to be there.  I tell him that it hurts my feelings, that he never came to any of my rallies in front of the City-County Building prior to a meeting.  I never notified him about what we were doing or talk to the police.    What’s the difference?  I tell him what the cops downstairs said, that they were there because of the counter-protesters but I said I never saw them.   Turns out, there were 4.  I laugh, 6 cops for 4 counter protesters?  He says it is more about not knowing what might happen since they have blocked traffic in the past.  That seems silly to me since the intent was to get people to go to the Public Protection and Judiciary Committee and testify – not block traffic.  Seems like a huge waste of taxpayer dollars.  Do these people look like they needed 6 police officers to make sure they were safe from David Blaska?

Disparate treatment?  Occupy held rallies there and even that didn’t get police presence.  Is it because they have the word “Black” in their name?  Over-reaction?  Ridiculous.  Silly.  Sad.