B of A Meeting Has Charlotte Girding for Protests

Bank of America's (BAC) annual meeting once again has its hometown bracing for protests.

The city manager of Charlotte, N.C., has designated Wednesday's gathering of B of A shareholders "an extraordinary event" that is expected to attract many people to the city over the next two days.

The legal designation authorizes local police to search backpacks, duffel bags, coolers and other containers of anyone who enters a roughly 42-block area that surrounds the Marriott City Center hotel where the meeting is slated to be held.

It also makes anyone found carrying items that could post a threat to public safety — such as pepper spray, chains, soaker devices or smoke bombs — subject to arrest.

Protestors are planning to take to the streets Tuesday, a day before the meeting, to read the names of borrowers in Mecklenburg County who were foreclosed on by Bank of America. Speakers at the demonstration are expected to carry suitcases as symbols of the displacement they say the homeowners have experienced.

Demonstrators also are planning a "zombie" parade to protest what they say are the bank's bizarre foreclosures, WCNC-TV reported. Other groups reportedly plan to demonstrate against Bank of America's financing of the coal industry.

The group Occupy Wall Street took to the news site Reddit on Tuesday to notify people of the gatherings.

About 600 demonstrators marched outside B of A's annual meeting last year to protest issues ranging from foreclosures to political contributions by the nation's second-biggest bank. A handful of protestors were arrested.

"Bank of America locations have been [targeted] in the past by well-organized groups that have unannounced marches, protests and disruptive activity," Charlotte City Manager Ron Carlee wrote on May 1 to Rodney Monroe, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief. "In order to provide a safe and secure event, as well as protecting the civil rights of those who wish to protest at the event, significant public resources will need to be expended."

Police expect hundreds of protestors to mass downtown again this year, although officials say they expect fewer demonstrators compared with last year, when protestors used Bank of America's gathering as a warm-up for the Democratic National Convention. "We expect the number of protestors to be in the hundreds, but how many hundreds, that's up in the air," Major Jeff Estes of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said.

Estes added that police generally have a good relationship with protest groups. "We try to make sure we foster good open communication and let them know the parameters and the rules  … and that formula seems to work well for both sides," Estes added.

Neither a spokesman for Bank of America nor a spokesman for the Marriott City Center responded immediately to a request for comment.

The designation marks at least the fourth time the city declared a so-called extraordinary event since passing a law last year that gives the city added powers to protect public safety, according to city spokeswoman Kim McMillan.

The city issued similar declarations on the eve of Bank of America's annual meeting last spring and the Democratic National Convention, which was held in Charlotte last summer, when Congress gave Charlotte $50 million to ensure the safety of visitors to the party's quadrennial gathering.

McMillan said the city regularly hosts events that draw thousands of visitors to downtown, including the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association's basketball tournament, a festival that ties to Nascar's Coca-Cola 600, and a celebration each year to mark Independence Day.

Bank of America's meeting is expected to kick off Wednesday at 10 a.m. Eastern. Besides electing directors and ratifying selection of the company's accountants, shareholders will vote on a proposal that would force the company to obtain an independent review of its mortgage servicing practices to ensure they are nondiscriminatory.

Shareholders at Wells Fargo (WFC) rejected a similar proposal recently but not before backers disrupted its annual meeting to complain about its practices.

"Bank of America is servicing the old Countrywide portfolio and unfortunately is doing a lousy job," said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, a New York group that sought the foreclosure review proposals at B of A and Wells. "One of the big problems are the servicers just delay and delay and delay."

Bank of America's board is recommending that shareholders withhold their support from the proposal, which the board says would duplicate efforts already under way by Bank of America to improve its mortgage procedures.

Proponents of the review measure got a boost Monday when New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman threatened to sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo over foreclosure practices that allegedly violate a settlement agreed to last year by the companies and three other big banks.

Bank of America said that it has provided relief for more than 10,000 New York homeowners under the settlement and that it would work quickly to address problems that Schneiderman flagged. Wells Fargo said it was "unfortunate that the New York Attorney General has chosen this route rather than engage in a constructive dialogue through the established dispute resolution process."

Zinner said he welcomes the attorney general's announcement. "There needs to be aggressive enforcement by regulators to push the servicers to follow the settlement and to serve communities," he added.