City Police Ready To Preserve the Peace at March 11 Downtown Rally

The Asheville City Police Department has been planning its response to the International Baptist Outreach Missions' (IBOM) advertised downtown rally since Thursday morning, according to a police spokesperson.

Asheville City Parks and Recreation director Irby Brinson confirmed that the March 11th rally is properly permitted. 

"We are of course aware of the [March 11] event," said John Dankel of the police department's Support Services Division. "We are making plans to ensure that it remains peaceful and everybody’s rights are preserved."

As a matter of course, specific police and public safety operational plans are not discussed to anyone in advance, said Dankel. "We never talk about what our plans are because anyone who might be planning any mischief -- we don’t want to give them any intelligence."

Dankel said that Asheville officials are ready for the Saturday morning rally and are well prepared to keep the peace.

"People certainly have a right to assemble and express their opinion," Dankel told DowntownAsheville.com in a telephone interview. "And if folks want to assemble and express their counter opinion, that’s the American way.

"As long as everyone respects each other’s rights, stays out of the streets, doesn’t shut down the traffic and all of that kind of stuff, our job is to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to exercise their rights."

Concluded Dankel: “We have contingency plans for about most anything that can happen.”

IBOM, which was one of the listed groups that paid for the two controversial full-page ads in Thursday's Asheville Citizen-Times' Home & Garden section, was founded by Wendell Runion.

If prior history is any lesson, Saturday's rally has the potential of being huge, given Runion's past ability to organize large events. 

Runion was one of the organizers of the massive "We Still Pray" event held at Reynolds High School's stadium in 2000, which clogged area highways for miles around and received national media attention for its religious beliefs.

City officials offered no projected crowd size for the March 11 downtown rally.

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