New York Churches Shelter Occupy Protesters, Now Monitored By New York Police

[There Is No Spoon]

...

According to church officials, two police officers (one later identified as belonging to the intelligence division) asked to use the bathroom but instead “entered the sanctuary, one remaining near the door while the other advanced down the aisle, apparently counting the demonstrators in the pews.” Then, one officer went downstairs to a homeless women’s shelter and “asked for information about who was sleeping there” without identifying himself or showing his badge. The church’s Rev. James Karpen called the police actions “invasive”:

“It is disconcerting that they would actually enter the sanctuary,” said the Rev. James Karpen, known as Reverend K, senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew, on West 86th Street. “Here we had offered hospitality and safety, which is our business as a church; it just felt invasive.” [...]

“They are welcome to come in if they just say who they are,” Mr. Karpen said. “We have never had that kind of issue with the police before. Usually, they are very respectful of church-state issues.”

Church officials said two other police intelligence officers visited earlier in the day, claiming they were following up on “an anonymous report of vandalism,” which, according to the church, had not taken place. The officers warned associate Pastor Siobhan Sargent that they did not want anything to happen to the church and that that was a “risk” with the protesters sleeping there. Sargent replied, “that’s what the church is for.”

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http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/art...paragraph4

Unreal.

“We have never had that kind of issue with the police before. Usually, they are very respectful of church-state issues.”

Something's happening here...

[jaxx]

Churches have always been respected as off limits to this kind of thing. Sheltering people shouldn't be a reason for the police to butt in. Damn the intrusions.

[Ikonoklast]

I love how the police invent 'reports' of some sort of petty crime as the pretense to do a warrantless search.

If you still think that you are living in a free society, you've never gone up against a police force that has decided that *you* are the enemy.

Your rights under the Constitution of this nation exist only as a theory, in practice, one must prove themselves worthy of having any rights.