Dane County cracks down on members of the Occupy Madison movement by handing out tickets at their new site.More >> Dane County cracks down on members of the Occupy Madison movement by handing out tickets at their new site.More >>
MADISON (WKOW) -- Occupy Madison campers are on the move again.
Dane County workers moved them out of Lake View Hill Park Tuesday morning, after the campers refused to heed the request of county officials to leave there by Saturday night.
"We got raided actually," said camper Franjo Majstoric. "It was full-on, full-force raid with dump-trucks to come in and move our property."
"Everything worked very, very smoothly and there were no problems," said Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney.
Sheriff's deputies and Madison police officers kept the peace as Dane County Parks workers moved all of the campers property to Token Creek Park in the Town of Burke.
The campers worry they are being relocated too far away from essential services, because there is no public transportation there.
"How am I gonna maintain a job? I don't have a vehicle. How am I gonna maintain anything that takes regular, being there on-time. There's no way for it to happen," said Majstoric.
The group's advocates are also concerned about volunteers being able to provide assistance there.
"It makes it more difficult for them to bring food, to bring, to just be part of their community and help out and be supportive," said Bruce Wellbaum, who has been helping the campers.
"We had no notice and we'd sure like to have been able to have some input to help out with some plans," said DeForest Village President Judd Blau.
Officials from both DeForest and the Town of Burke told 27 News that Dane County officials gave them absolutely no warning this was happening.
They worry about the potential effects on their small communities.
"I don't know what impacts it will have on our community and senior center, our fire department, our police department, the food pantries," said Blau.
Campers say they believe county officials just wanted to move them out of Madison as fast as they could.
"The best thing for them was, now we're out of their hair. They finally found a place to stash the problem away," said Franjo Majstoric.
