Trespassing -- Are Those Signatures Valid?

There has been a question about whether the petition-pushers were trespassing when they collected signatures at Giant food stores on the weekend of February 16th and 17th and Monday the 18th, which was President's Day -- or actually on any day besides February 9th and 10th.

The Citizens for a Responsible Whatever have a YouTube video they say shows them being harassed while they collected signatures. Their press release says it was recorded on Monday, February 18th, while signatures were being collected outside the Giant store at the Westwood Shopping Center in Bethesda. On the video Dana Beyer was telling them that an email had been sent out, they were going to be asked to leave, and that the signatures collected there would not be valid. According the CRW, none of this was true. They say they had permission to be there.

We had two comments on this blog yesterday by people we know and trust, an MCPS parent and an MCPS teacher. First, Tish said this:

I phoned the managers of several Giant grocery stores in Montgomery County. They all said the same thing - the company has a policy that allows groups to use the public space on their property only on Saturdays and Sundays on no more than one weekend per month with no more than two people and one table. The store managers I spoke with told me that if the CRG showed up at their stores on Monday they would be asked to leave.

I didn't see Dana saying anything that is not established policy of the Giant grocery chain.

Shortly after that, another comment, this time from Derrick:

I called Giant HQ as well that was their policy (as per Tish's blog roll response).

CRW was trespassing.

Later, Tish elaborated:

The Giant grocery chain has a policy that applies to every community group that wants access to the public space in front of their stores. The policy applies to the Girl Scouts and Boys Scouts when they sell their cookies and popcorn, it applies to the CRW, and it would apply to us if we wanted to set up tables supplying information about what the anti-discrimination code really does. The policy is that a group may have access to the space for one weekend, consisting of one Saturday and one Sunday, per month. The policy does not extend to Monday, even on holiday weekends. I was told told by the store managers that the CRW petitioners had had their days at the stores and that if they came back they would be asked to leave.

The CRW crews who set up at Giant grocery stores more than one weekend in a month and the crews who returned to some Giant stores on Monday were not abiding by the permission granted them. The CRW leadership seems to have failed to tell their volunteers that the permission they received had certain limits which they were obliged to respect.

I'm not sure why that is hard for some CRW supporters to understand.

I'm not going to call Giant to confirm it another time. I know these two people, and their word is good.

There are two points to come out of this. The first point has to do with Dana telling the petition folks that they would be asked to leave. They should have been asked to leave, if the Giant managers were following corporate policy. We don't know if an actual email was sent, but Dana had been told by somebody in the corporate office that one would be, and the email would only have been reiterating company policy. If the managers had followed policy, the petition-pushers would have been asked to leave, email or not.

Second point. The CRW had gathered signatures at Giant stores on the weekend of the 9th and 10th, which was their one weekend per month, okay, that's cool, they had permission to do that. But other days, including the weekend of the 16th and the 17th and Presidents' Day the 18th, they were on company property without permission. If they weren't evicted it is either because the supervisor in charge of the Giant didn't know the company rules, or because that Giant was supporting the re-legalization of gender-identity discrimination.

So the second question concerns the validity of signatures gathered while trespassing. Giant has a very clear one-weekend-per-month rule for using their public space. That's a nice thing to do, they offer something good to the community, it makes sense from a business standpoint and from a good-citizen standpoint. And the policy is clear: one weekend. Not two weekends, not Mondays, even when they're holidays.

The CRW took advantage of the blanket permission for one weekend, as they have the right to do. They stood outside of Giants all over the county -- for two weekends and a Monday that we know about, and probably other days we are unaware of. They were trespassing for all but two of those days, approaching people on private property without permission.

The question is whether signatures collected during the commission of a crime should be considered valid by the Board of Elections. Let's start with gun-to-the-head and work back.