Three members of the Denton Drilling Awareness Group were arrested when they refused to move away from the entrance to a fracking site where work began June 2, 2015.
Before arresting them, however, Sergeant Jenkins, a 30-year veteran of the Denton police department, thanked the three —
Adam Briggle, a professor at the University of North Texas, and Denton residents Niki Chochrek and Tara Linn Hunter —
for the work they had done.
The three were charged with criminal trespass and released before noon. The arrests come a week after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation that prohibits cities and towns in Texas from banning fracking.
In a prepared statement before his arrest, Briggle wrote about Texas law HB40:
“An act of civil disobedience requires you to distinguish just laws from unjust laws. I have read much about this and discussed Antigone, Thoreau, and Martin Luther King, Jr. with my students. But I have never acted until now, because never before has that distinction been so clear in my mind. A just law would give those exposed to the harms of fracking a meaningful voice. An unjust law would subordinate those voices to the dictates of the powerful and wealthy. HB 40 is an unjust law.”