Wisconsin Capitol Police to continue to limit access to state Capitol

Despite a court order early yesterday morning mandating the state Capitol be opened to its owners, the Wisconsin Capitol Police have issued the following memorandum outlining continued plans to limit public access to the state Capitol today:

MEMO TO: ALL WISCONSIN LEGISLATORS

FROM: CAPITOL POLICE – INTERIOR BRANCH

RE: CONSTITUENT BADGES FOR VISITOR APPOINTMNENTS WITH LEGISLATORS/STAFF

Procedures for visitor access to the Capitol will be the same Wednesday, March 2, as they were on Tuesday. Visitors who have appointments with legislators or legislative staff will be permitted access to the Capitol building at the King Street entrance using a queuing system. Appointments will be confirmed by law enforcement officers at the entrance; then visitors will be “badged” with one of eight constituent visitor badges allocated to your office. Up to eight visitors to your office will be permitted at one time, and to facilitate moment through the building all visitors will be escorted to your office by a law enforcement officer.

We are requesting and will rely on your cooperation to make this work as conveniently as possible for you and your constituent visitors.

At the conclusion of your visitors’ appointments, we are requesting that you escort your visitors, with their badges, back to the King Street entrance to leave, so the badges can be collected and re-issued to other visitors with appointments for your office. If your visitors leave the Capitol without returning their badges to law enforcement officers at the King Street entrance, the number of badges lost or misplaced will reduce the number of future constituent visitors who will be permitted into the Capitol for appointments in your office. If, for example, one of the eight badges allocated to your office is not recovered, additional constituents permitted to meet in your office will be reduced by one.

Please help us make this work by escorting your visitors back to the King Street entrance so their badges can be re-used by other constituents wishing to visit your Capitol office.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation as we work to make constituent visits to your offices as convenient as possible at the same time we ensure the safety and security of the Capitol facility.

It looks like Gov. Scott Walker has found a way of dealing with the peaceful protesters at the Capitol that’s right up his authoritarian alley: restricting access to the Capitol while putting up concrete barriers and snow fencing outside.

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10 thoughts on “Wisconsin Capitol Police to continue to limit access to state Capitol

  1. Don’t blame the police, they are only following the orders of the boy king and his royal fitzgerald court.

  2. I remember the Allies hanging a bunch a guys that claimed that same thing.

  3. This action is nothing short of Fascism. What should concern everyone is that a pseudo militaristic arm of the government is limiting the opposition’s access to public officials by the order of the Executive branch. The intent is clear; limit the opposition’s ability to organize which in turn limits opposition to the ruling party as a whole. I’m not sure what else you could call this.

  4. I assume neither the assembly, senate nor supreme court are in session today?

  5. I was at the front of the line at the King St entrance yesterday with a pass issued by my assemblyman, but was refused entrance to the capitol building by police from jurisdictions outside of Dane County, while my assemblyman stood right behind them and shouted to me that he didn’t know what was going on, and that it was the craziest thing he’d ever seen.

    There is something seriously, seriously wrong with this.

    Can you imagine what the right would have done had Obama and the Democrats done this during the health care reform debate? There would have been bloodshed.

  6. I went in yesterday, and the staffer did not know what the procedure was and we ended up leaving with the badges because no one knew what to do with them.
    They are not letting “average Joe & Josephine” in. The dedicated “sleep over” protestors are strictly limited to food, and now any thing that gets in.

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