Earlier this week, I posted a link to a Wall Street Journal article about how the city of Boulder, CO took some extreme measures to stop the annual Pumpkin Run — wherein the participants put a jack-o-lantern on their head and streak across town. This had been going on for about 10 years before it was stopped this year.
The WSJ article painted a grim picture of a police department that was ready to use the SWAT team on nude joggers, and prosecute them for a sex offense. Because this seemed so outrageous, I called the Boulder PD and talked to Sarah Huntley, their public affairs person, to see what was going on. She gave me a different version of the events than the one reported in the Journal. It turns out that the the same night as the Pumpkin Run was planned, there was another event, called the Mall Crawl. She described this as a lot of people getting drunk and roaming the streets. Because daylight savings time ended Halloween night, that provided an extra hour of the bars being open. The police were concerned about things getting out of hand; and also concerned that a drunk mob and a bunch of naked people might not be a good mix. She said the SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team was on backup but was not deployed. The country sheriff’s patrol was also on call, but not utilized. So that explains the SWAT team.