Cecil the lion: hunter's reopened office is calm but protesters vow to fight on

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/06/cecil-the-lion-walter-palmer-dentist-office-open

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The office of Dr Walter Palmer, the dentist who sparked international outrage over his killing of Cecil the lion, has returned to doing business with a placid air of normality.

At the end of its third week of operation since closing for three weeks, River Bluff Dental in Bloomington, Minnesota, was quiet – a marked contrast to the scene in late July, when hundreds protested outside his then shuttered office, carrying signs that dubbed Palmer the “butcher of Bloomington”.

Inside Palmer’s office now, the well-appointed reception area was calm and empty, with only the murmur of a television to be heard. Was Palmer at the office Thursday? “No comment.”

Outside, a mobile police surveillance camera remained. But it hasn’t had much to look at recently.

Occupying the corner space in the parking lot was a mobile surveillance unit the Bloomington police department had parked there at the end of July, at the height of large demonstrations and an encampment of news organizations from around the world. A pole with a camera on top rose out of a metal box on wheels.

There have been no police calls to the dental office, said deputy chief Mike Hartley. He said the camera “deters people from committing a crime and serves an investigative purpose if a crime is committed”. But, he added, “that hasn’t been the case”. Still, the camera remains “as a precaution”.

The only excitement since a media flurry when the office reopened, he said, was a small protest on 28 August. Police were there to monitor the demonstration and make sure protesters didn’t disrupt traffic. “It was uneventful,” Hartley said.

Outside, patients seemingly skewed toward the older end of the population came and went for dental appointments, with little to say on Palmer’s notoriety.

“We’ve been going here for years and years,” said a woman pulling into the parking lot with an older man. Any misgivings about the lion incident? “We have a lot of confidence [in River Bluff Dental],” she said.

The patients seemed to be returning customers. Google still lists River Bluff Dental as “permanently closed”. Calls to the office go straight to a voicemail message.

Lingering outside River Bluff Dental on Thursday was the local organizer of the demonstration on 28 August: Brenda Spencer of Lakeville, who used her lunch break from her job in Eagan to observe how regular activity has resumed at the clinic.

“I’ve never protested anything before,” she said. But she had made a friend online, Cynthia Oshel of Kansas, who was also outraged at Palmer’s killing of Cecil, and together they “co-hosted” a six-hour protest two weeks after River Bluff Dental reopened.

The goal of the demonstration: to say “we haven’t forgotten. We’re still bothered by it. For us it hasn’t gone away. There are people out there that don’t approve of what he’s doing.”

Although 700 RSVP’d for the event “in spirit”, the protest drew about 50 people in person, she said. Some came from as far away as South Dakota and Detroit. More protests are planned for the coming months in other places, she said, including Boston, Washington DC and Las Vegas, where Safari Club International –a group Palmer has been affiliated with – will convene.

“My goal is to have Palmer brought to justice,” she said, and she wondered aloud why more wasn’t happening on the legal front.

Zimbabwe has charged a member of Palmer’s hunting party and demanded Palmer’s extradition, although the country’s first lady, Grace Mugabe, said last week: “The dentist who killed the lion must be left alone.”

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is “investigating whether the circumstances surrounding the death of Cecil the Lion constituted a violation of federal US law,” according to spokesperson Gavin Shire. He said he couldn’t say more about an active investigation, including whether Palmer is cooperating.

Meanwhile, a few miles west of the dental office, in Eden Prairie, where Palmer lives, only a single vehicle remains following the media encampment that lined his street six weeks ago. Gone are the “no parking” signs police posted in the neighborhood.

Pictures purporting to show Palmer walking in the area surfaced on the day his clinic reopened, but they are the only indication of his presence in the Twin Cities. He also owns property in northern Minnesota and a home in Florida that vandals sprayed with graffiti, but his whereabouts have been a mystery since the scandal broke.

One person who has been inside Palmer’s residence is John Wahley, who divides his time between a home on Palmer’s street and Des Moines, Iowa. Wahley said he spoke more often with Palmer’s wife, Tonette, with whom he shared an interest in antiques. But the family, he said, is “very, very private” and “seem to be away on weekends”. Aside from brief greetings, Whaley said he last talked to Walter Palmer in 2003.

So it was stunning to Whaley, while traveling in London this summer, to see the news about Cecil the lion’s demise. “I picked up the paper [and said]: ‘What the hell? That’s Walt Palmer!’” He began to hear from people back home. People in London were impressed to learn he knew Palmer – to an extent.

“I mean, nobody bought me a drink,” he said.