Occupy LA Activist Fails to Show Up in Court

An Occupy LA protester was a no-show in court Friday despite filing for a temporary restraining order to prevent police from taking down tents around City Hall without first providing notice to campers.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant had set a deadline of 8:45 a.m. for papers to be filed, but none were presented by that time to his clerk. The matter was dismissed.

The relationship between Occupy LA activists and the LAPD has been relatively calm during the past two months. So, organizers of the movement say the court motion was baffling. Legal analysts say it was it was a highly unusual request.

"Normally, instead what happens is: you demonstrate, the police do something bad and then, you go to court," said NBC4 legal analyst Royal Oakes.

But, Occupy LA organizer Pam Noles said the motion did not come from the movement's leadership and the issue never was mentioned in the nightly general assembly meetings.

"To my knowledge, it never came up," she said.

She said the issue was never even considered by what the group calls a "legal committee," which the movement has organized to consider such issues.

"We're a very open, messy democracy, open-source kind of thing," said Noles. "That means, if you want to go and speak, you go and speak."

"It would have been a real uphill battle for the demonstrators to say to the judge, 'Give us a pre-emptive order. We want to prevent the cops from doing anything bad,'" said Oakes.

Noles agreed with Oakes' assessment to the extent that relations with authorities haven't come to that point yet.

Leaders of the movement are looking into who filed the motion.

"If somebody's going to take it on their own initiative to act unilaterally without consulting with the rest of the group, then they should at least show up to back up what they did," added Noles.

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