APD: No major issues with Occupy Asheville so far

An Asheville Police Department spokesperson tells Xpress that the department has had “no real issues” with Occupy Asheville demonstrators so far.

“We’ve had some minor interactions, but nothing that rose to the level of a criminal incident,” Lt. Wallace Welch tells Xpress. “What we’re finding as a general rule is that they’re pretty receptive to input from us on where they can be, when they can be there, that sort of thing.”

“The only thing that we’ve really run into is that they slept on Wall Street one night,” he continues. “We talked with them about that and they agreed not to sleep on the sidewalks. Late last week, we talked with them about getting on the property of the federal building — they’d gotten on there to sleep — and we had to move them along from there as well. But there have been no arrests, they’ve been approachable and amenable to all the suggestions. No real issues at this point.”

Just over a week old, the Occupy Asheville demonstrations, “broadly criticizing corporate dominance and government corruption,” according to one of their announcements, have shifted from place to place downtown, with overnight campouts, “moving pickets” through the streets and general assemblies held in Pritchard Park and Pack Square Park. Representatives of the protesters are asking Asheville City Council for a curfew exemption to camp in Pack Square Park overnight at tonight’s meeting.