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Hickenlooper Overall Pleased With Handling Of Protesters

DENVER (CBS4) - Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper says he has heard from other states about how Colorado has handled the "Occupy" movement. Overall he's is pleased with how Thursday night went.

Hickenlooper said there were two key ingredients into making Thursday night and Friday morning a success -- planning and patience. The combination of passion, protests and police can be combustible. But in this case, it wasn't.

"A lot of training the days before; there were very specific procedures and sequences of implementation," Hickenlooper said. "It takes a great deal of preparation."

Hickenlooper said the decision to wait until the early morning hours to escalate enforcement kept arrests low and violence non-existent.

"We knew that talking to people and giving them a chance to leave voluntarily makes it safer for them and safer for troopers," he said.

Most protesters commended the police presence.

"I actually think we worked together pretty well," a protester said.

PHOTO GALLERY: Occupy Denver

"I think they stayed in very good control and I bless their hearts because they came down here to do business," Neal Minter with Occupy Denver said.

Others were less complimentary.

"I am furious with their response last night; the first amendment has no curfew. They don't understand that," another protester said.

Still, Hickenlooper said his greatest feeling is gratitude toward State Patrol and others who helped keep the peace. He said other cities can learn from this success.

"Most of the world is going to look at this and say, 'How did you do it?' This was a model operation," he said.

The governor says half the world says they should have acted much sooner to remove the protesters and half says they shouldn't have acted at all. It's hard to please everyone.

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