Police And Occupiers Find Common Ground

A member of Occupy Santa Cruz called 9-1-1 to have an extremely drunk man removed from their camp around 9pm Thursday. They tried to deal with the situation themselves by offering to let him to sleep in a tent on the condition that he got rid of his beers. At one point they had to remove him from the lanes on Water Street where he had laid down.

“He has been around the general assemblies the last two or three days, and he is usually loud and disruptive, and greeters kind of usher him to the side,” said Steve Pleich an attorney and occupier. “He has just got such an alcohol thing going on that he can't verbalize with people...options just kept getting eliminated and so we called 9-1-1. This is why we pay our taxes.”

The incident showed that the law enforcement and OSC can work together on matters other than booting them out of the park.

“They're just doing their job on this one,” said one occupier as he filmed four sheriffs officers struggling to get the man in handcuffs.

They have been making efforts to deal with the problem of drug use in the camp that have drawn threats from city official ad critics of the movement to have the camp taken down entirely. Sharp Solutions Inc. has donated containers to dispose of syringes used by diabetic occupiers.

Noah Shepardson is also a medical work group at OSC, said that more than insulin needles may be disposed in the red plastic containers. Just as drugs existed on Earth long before humans existed, San Lorenzo park was a hub of drug sales and use before the occupiers chose it as their headquarters.

“There are some health problems in the camp that are related to drug and alcohol,” said Shepardson. “We are trying our best to address this. But this IS Santa Cruz, and there is a lot of that going on. Especially in this part of town.”

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