Buckhorn okay so far with Occupy Tampa protests

Tampa officers's rules regarding the protesters is pretty succinct:


No sleeping in the park, only along the edge of the sidewalk. No items are allowed on the sidewalk except for one table.


That has made the issue less complicated for TPD officers vs. what's happening in New York City, where protesters are sleeping over night in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan.


Buckhorn praises the Tampa activists, saying "I think they’ve been respectful of the police and in return the police have been respectful of them."


More than 800 arrests have taken place in New York, and there were also arrests in Chicago over the weekend. But Mayor Buckhorn, who has been outspoken in challenging anarchists that if they intend to create havoc at the Republican National Convention in Tampa next summer they will be sorry they did, is positive about what's happened over the past few weeks.


“Obviously they’re entitled to exercise their first amendment rights, and as long as they do it in a peaceful way and as long as they comply with the existing codes and ordinances than they can protest as long as they want..but obviously if they step over that line, there will be ramifications.”

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Events were held in both Gaslight Park and Curtis Hixon Park for the social activist movement known as Occupy Tampa over the weekend, and, unlike some of their brethren around the country, there were no arrests made.

The only real points of contention in the weeks long event took place last Friday morning, when some activists said they received conflicting information from different Tampa Police officers regarding what they could or couldn't do inside Curtis Hixon.

That led to TPD officers later in the day to print and distribute the official rules in the park, so everybody, yes literally, could remain on the same page.

One interested observer, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, said on Monday that as long as everyone knows what the rules are, he thinks its been a "great working relationship" between the activists and the protesters.

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