Tents pitched outside of the Monroe County Courthouse for an extended protest against police brutality, June 7, 2020.
(George Hale, WFIU/WTIU News)
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Department will require all protesters to leave the grounds of the Monroe County Courthouse Tuesday night in accordance with a 2013 county ordinance that prohibits overnight public use.
Activists with various local organizations have been camping on the courthouse lawn for about a week as part of a protest against police brutality in the wake of the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd. Tents, canopies and large signs have been placed on the lawn.
Monroe County Sheriff Brad Swain says the county allowed the protesters to stay “long enough to make their point.”
The move comes after flyers were distributed around the downtown square advising protesters that all “camp facilities” and “paraphernalia” must be removed from the courthouse grounds by Friday at 10 a.m.
Bloomington activist group No Space For Hate condemned both deadlines in a Facebook post, writing that “The protesters have requested a show of support, not to resist the eviction, but to condemn it and then pivot the conversation to defunding and demilitarizing local police forces.”
Swain says the separate notices may have caused some confusion. He says the camping property and equipment may stay on the lawn until Friday, but the sheriff’s department will begin enforcing the courthouse hours tonight.
“[The county is] giving them a little more time, if they need to, to remove the property that they set up on the lawn," he says.
Protester Nick Bergen says his impression of the two notices was that protesters and property both have to be gone by tonight.
“We’re not going to take this stuff down alone,” he says. “If the police want to evict a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest, that is entirely up to them. We’re going to force their hand on that.”
Bergen says the group is planning to protest the eviction decision.
The Bloomington Police Department says it will not be involved with the eviction.
Chapter 262 of the Monroe County Code states that the courthouse grounds are open for public use from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily unless extended hours are otherwise approved. According to the ordinance and Indiana law, anyone on the grounds outside of the hours of operation could be charged with trespassing.
