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Thank you for your post to the information it contains. You'll get no heat from me, I find your post and your points entirely reasonable. It is good to know that the policemen are thoroughly trained. I agree with you that the ejections were probably under a disorderly persons ordinance or statute.

I do have reservations about a disorderly persons law that can be used to shut down speech, especially political speech, under a test that the speech constitutes disorderly conduct if it causes "inconvenience, annoyance or alarm." I do not much like the idea of being required to modify my speech or my behavior to suit the subjective and highly irrational threshold of annoyance for someone like, for example, Sheila Jackson-Lee or Maxine Walters.

I am surprised that the statute has withstood constitutional test. I would reject it on two grounds: First, is unconstitutional because it is too vague. Second, it is unconstitutional because it is too subjective, it falls into the trap of fixing my constitutional rights on your threshold of tolerance. I suppose it could be dressed up by saying that it must cause inconvenience, annoyance or alarm to a reasonable person under the circumstances rather than to the actual parties involved. I just do not like free speech to be dependent on the acting ability of the one objects to it.

I quite agree that the cops are put in a very difficult position in these situations. Whether they behave reasonably I think depends to a large degree on whom they think has a right to set the standard. Is it a reasonable standard applicable to all situations or is it a movable standard depending (and dependent ) the parties involved?

FWIW, CWRU is a private university (my AM, BTW).

It is located in “University Circle” which is a cultural area stuffed with hospitals, museums, and CWRU, along with Severance Hall (Cleveland Orchestra), Cleveland Clinc, restaurants, etc. Worked well many decades ago, but now all the institutions are competing for space and the surrounding neighborhoods (except “Little Italy”) turned to ghetto. You have Cleveland Police, although they’re generally busy with keeping the “neighbors” out of the circle, and also “University Circle” has it’s own police force. Then the University has its own. I suspect the various institutions all have their own police to one degree or another.

It’s somewhat of an interesting or odd (depending on your perspective) place to learn. CWRU was formed by the merger of Western Reserve University (liberal arts college) and Case Insitute of Technology (engineering, etc.). Allied are CIA and CIM (Cleveland Insitutes of Art and Music, respectively), plus the graduate schools and medical schools. There’s a huge legion of geeks, and another huge legion of trust fund liberals mixed in with musicians, artists, doctors, historians, etc.

When I was there for my undergrad work (late 80s), most people didn’t have the time for politics (the place wasn’t cheap then, and is even worse now). You definitely don’t coast through an engineering degree, and especially not there. Only those who were there on Mommy and Daddy’s dime majoring in poetry or the like had the luxury of time to be politically active. That may have changed in the last few decades.

Just a little background from my (perhaps slightly outdated) perspective...

I still live in Cleveland, but don’t get over to that side of town much anymore.

I probably should have expanded my reply to include more of the pertinent language in the statute. In Ohio, there are two sections to the Disorder Conduct statute. One section deals with D/C Intoxication which basically says if a person is willfully drunk and causes a disturbance or is to a point where he is unable to care for himself, he can be charged. The other section is D/C Disturbance. This section deals with the wording inconvenience, annoyance or alarm in a public place. When I was still a LEO in Ohio the charge was a minor misdemeanor and a subject could be arrested. The Supreme Court of Ohio struck down the portion of the law that allowed arrest since the penalty for a minor misdemeanor carries no provisions for incarceration. The way the law now reads is that a person charged with D/C Disturbance is given a summons to appear (like a traffic ticket.) I would guess (and I don't like to second-guess the officers thoughts) the officers felt the action/reaction of the comments were becoming incendiary and thought by removing the people from the venue it would defuse a tough situation. Remember how quickly the SEIU and Acorn groups are to resort to violence. I wasn't there, I don't know what the dynamic was, but having spent 20 years as a police officer the first rule of thumb in deescalating a situation is to get the people that are causing the problem out of there. I doubt there was any thought given to the content of what was said, it was a reaction to a situation that could have quickly gotten out of hand. I spend many a time dealing with protesters during my career and it didn't matter to me which side of the fence they were on. A crowd can get very ugly, very quickly. Again, from my experience, every time I had to deal with a “mob” it was started by someone who verbally agitated the crowd and then melted away after the crowd had reached its boiling point. And, lastly, there is a feeling of anonymity in a crowd. People will do things in a crowd that they would never do alone. Just my thoughts.