Republican officials at the St. Charles Caucuses today abruptly shut down the caucus meeting and threatened to jail the attendees if they did not immediately leave the building. The attendees at the Francis Howell North High School in St. Peters, Missouri booed and started to chant, “Stay! Stay! Stay!”
UPDATE: A police chopper was called in… Wild!
Bob McCarty, who was there, called it a St. Patrick’s Day Massacre. At least one person was arrested.
The caucus began shortly after 11 a.m. with an invocation and pledge of allegiance. It was followed by a reading of the rules by County GOP Central Committee Member Bryan Spencer and an introduction of County GOP Chair Eugene Dokes.
Dokes reiterated the importance of the rules and emphasized the ban on recording devices before pausing to implore a man in the bleachers to turn off his video camera or face arrest.
When the man refused to put away his tripod-mounted camera, Dokes asked members of the St. Peters Police Department to arrest the man and escort him out of the building. That, of course, drew heated objections from members of the crowd — including Ron Paul supporters and others — who seemed to believe transparency should trump rules during the caucus. After being drowned out by the volume of those objections, GOP officials conferred with police and, within a half hour, more than a dozen more uniformed officers arrived at the scene.
Read the rest here.
Doug Edelman at The Examiner has another report on the caucus mayhem.
UPDATE: A police chopper was called in!
Here’s video:
