"Feary then notified police to have Blanchard removed. I informed Blanchard that he was asked to leave and needed to do so. Blanchard then continued to the front of the room where counselors sat behind a table and insisted on giving them paperwork,” according to the police report. “Sergeant Singer then directed me to place Blanchard under arrest for trespassing. Blanchard was placed in handcuffs, escorted from the property, and transported to Rogers County Jail."
The video seems to back up that account, showing him being told he needs to leave, and him instead walking to the front with paperwork, before finally being arrested.
To be clear I don't think this justifies the charges, but it's weird the article repeatedly frames it like he just went a couple second over and was immediately slapped in cuffs, marched out and charged.
Typically when someone refuses to leave, police inform the person that they are being formally trespassed, at which point they have the option to leave voluntarily at which point they are only allowed back at the trespassee's discretion. Not sure how that would work for public places where people have to conduct municipal business.
Even then, hard to tell if this will hold up in court. Town halls should be recorded ("should") and there's inevitable up and downtime for speakers. This is why police have a radar tolerance of 5 mph before trying to write a speeding ticket.
I don't know if that's long enough for a trespassing charge to really stick. But then again, Oklohoma.
https://www.youtube.com/live/xLPF3rTT0mY
The event in question can be seen around 1:56:00 through 2:00:00 (approx)
Has the state AG commented on this?
I was actually just looking into that: Beale Infrastructure, owned by Blue Owl.
we saw a gap: some of the largest global hyperscalers—companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google—needed partners who could move at their speed and scale to solve their growing data needs
https://wealth.blueowl.com/learnengage/ra/capturing-growth-t...
The CEO is ex-Azure/Microsoft:
A 3-minute limit is sensible. Hauling someone off to jail because they spoke for a few seconds too long is tyrannical.
You should want better out of the society you live in. Even if you disagree with this farmer, ask yourself if he would have seen the same consequences if he went over the limit speaking in support of this Datacenter (spoiler: of course he wouldn't have).
Do you really want to live in a world where people are creatively charged with trespassing, not because of actual malicious action, but because they said something that the powers that be didn't like?
There are so many bootlickers here on HN these days. A sign of the times, I suppose.
But of course, what else can we expect? This is the natural consequence of putting ethics and morality after money. Money always wins. And once you start seeing the world like that, through the lens of "success makes right", you have to bend your view of reality to make it square. And then you wind up here, defending actions like this.
There was no need for this article to lie. The actual events were already worth being upset about. It only serves to distract.
Asking him to leave sounds likely to be an abuse, but it's a far cry from "arresting a citizen for going 3 seconds over their allotted free speech time."
They did not ask him to leave, and he refused. They counted down the seconds he had the floor, and ordered his arrest the moment he went over the allotted time.
I don't know if you've ever been to a Town Hall before, but this is absolutely ridiculous. When you go over your time, you can either ask for more time or be told that you are done.
You shouldn't be arrested unless you intentionally refuse to conclude your time, or if you create a disruption. He did neither.
They arrested him because they didn't like what he had to say, and they want to send a harsh message to anyone else who dares speak out against Datacenters.
This is an egregious violation of First Amendment rights.
I'm not going to address whether what happened was completely right, or the merits of the underlying discussion. But this is not a case of a poor dirt farmer shocked at being arrested. I'd be very surprised myself if he didn't at least think that was a possible outcome (and would not presume to suggest that it was intended in any way whatsoever, obviously being arrested would be detrimental to his cause!).
According to that article, he went over time, left the podium, had some words with the council and police, then was handcuffed and escorted out.
The police say that he was asked to leave by the council and refused. Then he was asked to leave by the police and also refused. At that point he was arrested for trespassing. I see no reason to doubt this version of events.
Asking him to leave sounds like an overstep, depending on what he said to them. But if it happened as that article described, it's probably not a First Amendment issue, definitely not an egregious violation.
I apologize for doing independent research on the topic. In the future I'll be sure to stick to the bits of the linked article that I can see.
There was a reddit post with this video, and the poster claimed that he refused to leave the podium after his time was up. Not saying that is true, but it sounds different than "spoke a few seconds too long"
https://www.reddit.com/r/ObscurePatentDangers/comments/1shsu...
It's abundantly clear that these things happen not because people were so disruptive that it was necessary. It is that they are saying things the government doesn't like, so they use the only tool they have as strictly as they are allowed to in an attempt to discourage people from speaking out in the first place.
At least this is triggering the Streisand Effect, and now this farmer is getting interviews on the news, not only about the Datacenter, but how the local government treats those who speak out against it.
It shows the full context. Yes, he went over his time, he talked over requests to stop, and then approached the front area. He was asked to leave the area, did not, and so the behavior was halted in favor of pre-established rules.
Yes, I’m in favor of free speech, and think more time should be allotted, but does his direct use of extra time impact those who will then not get to speak?
It’s the lines in the sand that are the hardest to draw.
I wasn't even trying to make any claims about the statement because I have no idea if the poster was even there. My mere point was that "there may be more to the story than what was posted on the 404 link".
And now someone posted the full video so you can just watch that and not need to rely on "grossly dishonest" posts.
"My mere point"
Again lying.
"not need to rely on "grossly dishonest" posts"
Talk about melodramatic ... I wasn't relying on your post.
The video shows that many people made unwarranted assumptions. That doesn't excuse you flat-out lying about what your link said.
I won't respond further on this dead post.