Video of a reported, but unconfirmed, 12 people arrested at the jail rally following Free Keene Fest today! They have reportedly been arrested for “trespassing” on the new jail property.
Most of these activists are now out of being processed from within the jail. Save for Lauren, who had an outstanding arrest warrant.
Known arrested:
Ian
Dale
Aubern
Rich Paul
Lauren C.
Richard Onley
Shawn Trifith
Jim Johnson
Mike Segal
Menno Troyer
Capuzzo
Kate
How does this jive with your belief of the people’s “right to assemble” on public property?
Back in October, while attending an arraignment for recently arrested activists from the Keene Pumpkin Festival, Brandon Durham was asked (told?) to remove his hood while in the court. After refusing multiple times the bailiff’s order, he was arrested and taken off to jail.
This past Wednesday, Brandon had his trial on a charge of trespassing. Not a charge of “wearing a hood in court” or “disobeying a court officer” or even their favorite – “disorderly conduct”. He was charged with trespassing under the logic that the court officer had asked him to leave the court, and he didn’t. Of course he was welcomed in, but suddenly was trespassing when he wanted to wear a hood?
Nonetheless, he had his trial on the charge, and here is the full video:
While Brandon did not offer much of a defense, Judge Howard Lane still saw the case as ambiguous enough to take it under advisement, and we will await a verdict. Maybe, just maybe, he will realize that wearing a piece of clothing is not a $1000 offense, or even a $1 offense.
**Further video of these events will be posted in the coming days**
Three people, including one Keene activist, were arrested Saturday afternoon at a 420 rally.
The event, starting at 4:20 pm, was peaceful and drew a lot of local support for around 30 minutes. Locals even joined in the unusually large crowd of people gathered in downtown Nashua. Activists held signs and drew hundreds of honks of support from passers-by.
Suddenly, 30-40 minutes into the event, two plainclothes officers closed in on a 17 year old teenager and arrested him for possession of marijuana. The ensuing moments, which will be posted here and across the web in the form of many videos, included two more arrests, many more police cars, and an attack dog.
Both of the other arrests were for disorderly conduct. David Krouse sat down in front of a police car and was arrested. On the other hand, Catherine Bleish of the Liberty Restoration Project was arrested for allegedly not getting out of the road when she was ordered to. Despite that police were on both sides of the road with a lot of confusion going on.
– The young man arrested first was released to his family from Nashua PD
– David was released from the Nashua Police Dept with an April 1 arraignment.
– Catherine reportedly was not giving her fingerprints, which caused the police to threaten to keep her in jail, but as of 8:45 ET was reportedly set to be released, but any court dates are of now unknown.
A recent mover within the last year, Andrew Mercer has kept a fairly low profile as far as activism goes, but he’s certainly still been active. He has gone to court hearings when he can, he’s been to a few 4:20 rallies, and he’s accompanied Sam on quests into City Hall for open records requests, he’s even been on a few CopWatching missions. Though he hasn’t gone out looking to push boundaries and engage in disobedience, but he was recently held in Vermont by state troopers just because one of them suspected he had an illegal plant in his possession.
However, Andrew just went to trial on an unrelated case out of Keene involving him being caught driving a car that didn’t have the correct license plate on it. At trial Andrew’s councel, FreeKeene blogger Nick Ryder, argued that the State could not prove that Andrew attached the wrong plate to the car, or allowed anyone else to.
Nonetheless, Judge Lane of the Keene District Court found Andrew guilty, and because of his resistance to paying fines to the government, Andrew will be committed to 50 hours in jail over two separate occasions. The first beginning this Tuesday afternoon (02-02-10).
He may be critiqued for “playing by the rules” in trying to defend himself “by the system” in court, but he’s costing the State several times the price of his $150 ticket. And if more people did that, the system would easily grind down.
A recent mover within the last year, Andrew Mercer has kept a fairly low profile as far as activism goes, but he’s certainly still been active. He has gone to court hearings when he can, he’s been to a few 4:20 rallies, and he’s accompanied Sam on quests into City Hall for open records requests, he’s even been on a few CopWatching missions. Though he hasn’t gone out looking to push boundaries and engage in disobedience, but he was recently 
