Sheriff's deputies comb through an empty Mellon Green
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A team of more than 60 Allegheny County sheriff's deputies found no protesters when it converged on the abandoned Occupy Pittsburgh encampment on Mellon Green early this morning to search the park.
The deputies were there to evict any remaining members of the group, which cleared out of the Downtown park after a march Wednesday night, declaring their efforts a victory.
Other law enforcement agencies, including city police and a hazardous materials team, were prepared to join deputies early this morning but became unneeded with the group's departure, Sheriff William Mullen said today.
Still, a pair of bomb-sniffing dogs took special precaution in searching the site after one protester made a "veiled threat" on an online feed suggesting that he would leave an explosive device behind for BNY Mellon, which owns the park.
A search through abandoned tents and found nothing but trash, the sheriff said.
There was no one to arrest.
Crews this morning erected a fence around the green, and the bank will be responsible for any clean-up. Members of Occupy Pittsburgh had been staying in the park since Oct. 15 in protest of corporate greed and other ills, but sheriff's deputies in the nights since a court-sanctioned eviction notice had watched their numbers dwindle.
Although police intelligence suggested there at least 50 people at the camp on Monday, the deadline Common Pleas Judge Christine Ward gave them to leave, just one person stayed in a tent from Tuesday to Wednesday, Sheriff Mullen said.
"I guess they kind of got bored with us and left," he said.
Their thinning numbers were all the more reason for deputies to wait to enforce the judge's order for a time that was most opportune, he said.
Protesters said Wednesday that the sheriff's refusal to enforce Judge Ward's order was a victory for them.
Not true, Sheriff Mullen said.
"We were going to go in at a time that was best for us," the sheriff said. "After last night, Mellon was in agreement that this morning would be the best time."
When deciding when to move in, he said his department considered intelligence from BNY Mellon security and Pittsburgh police, violence around the eviction of Occupy groups in other cities, and the weather, among other factors.
Deputies had learned that protesters were monitoring their movements on police radios and watching the camp with cameras from the windows of nearby hotels.
"There were all these different dynamics coming into play," he said.
In the end, he added, patience paid off.
He said he was grateful that the protests never turned violent as they did in other cities.
"This may have been the first city where they left willingly without a confrontation with police," he said.
First Published February 9, 2012 12:00 am
