Public Works employees then fenced off the entire Courthouse lawn, on both the north and south sides, though no tents had been erected on the County Courthouses's front lawn:
Occupiers said they had a conversation with Sheriff Jim Hammond, who would not provide a basis for the eviction in law, but instead encourage Occupiers to take the matter up with County Commission Chair Henry:
County Commission Chair Larry Henry personally called the Sheriff's Department this morning to ask that Sheriff's deputies assist the Hamilton County Department of Public Works in removing Occupy Chattanooga from the property so that the Public Works Department might begin working on their annual "re-seeding":
Occupy Chattanooga says they will convene a General Assembly tonight at 5:30 PM to discuss next steps.
UPDATE 3.20.2012 9:26 AM: On the same day that Hamilton County Sheriff deputies were forcibly removing Occupy Chattanooga from the County Courthouse lawn, County Attorney Rheubin Taylor and Chambliss, Bahner, & Stophel attorney Tom Greenholtz filed a "notice of dismissal" in Federal Court. Read the petition HERE. The notice says that the previous basis for the petition for declaratory judgement, seeking to pursue action against Occupy Chattanooga for "damaging" the Courthouse lawn, was no longer applicable:
When I confronted Commissioner Henry at the County Courthouse on the day of the eviction, he claimed that he was NOT aware what the status of the petition for declaratory judgement in Federal Court was. As the lead petitioner in the case and the specific legal entity charged by the County Commission with seeking legal action against Occupy Chattanooga, it is very difficult to imagine that Larry Henry did not know what was happening with regard to the petition for Declaratory Judgement. Unless it is possible that County Attorney Taylor "went rogue" and decided on his own volition to drop the lawsuit, which just happened to coincide on the same day as Occupy's eviction and the "annual re-seeding" of the lawn which makes the claims to property damage by Occupy moot.the circumstances identified in Hamilton County’s Petition regarding the damage caused to county property have changed, and a declaration based upon those previously identified circumstances no longer serves a useful purpose in clarifying the legal relations in issue. See Scottsdale Ins. Co. v. Flowers, 513 F.3d 546, 556 (6th Cir. 2008).Accordingly, the Petition should be dismissed as moot.
What this points to is this:
1. County Attorney Taylor and CBS corporate attorney Greenholtz had enough prior notice of the eviction of Occupy Chattanooga, for the ostensible purpose of an "annual re-seeding" of the lawn by the Hamilton County Department of Public Works, as to craft their notice of dismissal.
2. As the lead petitioner in the Declaratory Judgement, empowered by the County Commission to pursue all legal action against Occupy Chattanooga, the order for the eviction and for the notice of dismissal to be crafted and filed had to originate with Commission Chair Henry.
Given the Hamilton County Commission track record of secret meetings and violations of common procedure with regard to Occupy Chattanooga, I would be very surprised if this eviction strategy, using an "annual re-seeding" as justification for the eviction and dropping the petition for Declaratory Judgment in Federal Court (which was most likely going to seriously embarrass the County), was not crafted in a secret meeting of the County Commission - in violation of the Open Meetings Act or Sunshine Laws. I hope that the local press & Occupiers themselves pursue investigating the County Commission.
Decisions that affect the public, but exclude the public, are symptoms of government OVER the people not government OF the people.