BRATTLEBORO — It began quietly on a warm October day. It ended quietly on a cold December morning.
Without drama or attention, Brattleboro Police dismantled the Occupy Brattleboro encampment on the Common on Monday morning.
Police Lt. Robert Kirkpatrick helped two other officers in taking down the remaining tents and bagging up the belongings in them.
“This is abandoned property,” said Kirkpatrick, describing the empty tents as constituting a safety hazard.
Police Chief Eugene Wrinn said that his personnel regularly checked the site over the weekend, and saw that no one was staying in the tents.
He deferred all other comment to Town Manager Barbara Sondag.
The last camper on the Common was the one who started the occupation, Anthony Gilbert.
The 37-year-old Michigan native admitted on Monday that he had been spending less time on the Common with the coming of colder weather.
He said that he “was here at times, and other times I wasn't.” He expressed no surprise over Monday's actions.
“The only surprise was that it took so long,” he said. “I would have done it the same way if I were the police.”
As for the clothing, books, and other items at the site Monday, Gilbert said they had belonged to other campers.
“I already moved a lot of my stuff to somewhere else,” he said.
And the active occupation has given way to more practical matters for Gilbert, who said that he has a line on a couple of job opportunities in Brattleboro.
But that doesn't mean the protest has stopped; rather, he is “giving up the occupation of public space until spring.”
Over the winter, he said, the local Occupy movement will focus on home foreclosures “and finding ways to raise awareness to help people fight the banks.”
And the Saturday afternoon vigils at the Wells Fountain will continue.
Gilbert first set up his tent on the Common on Oct. 7, and stayed for nearly three months, despite early requests by police and town officials to leave.
Town ordinances prohibit overnight camping on town property, but Gilbert - who said he studied for 1½ years at the University of Michigan Law School - discovered that the land belonged not to the town, but to the Centre Congregational Church.
After a title search, he found no record that the church, which once used the land for its first meetinghouse, ever deeded the property to the town.
That loophole allowed Gilbert to stay while the town figured out an alternative strategy.
In the meantime, the Centre Church congregation unanimously voted on Nov. 6 to authorize the Church Council “to execute a quitclaim deed on behalf of Centre Congregational Church to relinquish any and all claims the church may have on the property.”
As many as five people were living on the Common at the encampment's peak, but Gilbert said those people departed once the Overflow Shelter on Main Street opened last month.